Serves: 9 – 10 / Prep time: 1 hour / Baking: 30 minutes
Ingredients
For the dough
2 eggs
100 ml vegetable oil
1 plain yoghurt (I used Greek yogurt)
1/2 cup milk
1 pinch salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp. of vanilla essence
4 cups flour
2 cups corn flour
To pour over the cutout dough
1/2 cup vegetable oil
200 grams unsalted butter
for filling
1/2 cup each (almonds, walnuts, or pistachios are best, or use a combination of them)
1 tsp cinnamon powder
3/4 tsp cardamom powder
For the syrup
3 cups sugar
1 litre water
Quarter lemon (juice and the skin)
Method
Sugar syrup
1_ Put all the ingredients for sugar syrup into a pan and cook until sugar syrup reduces to one third. Set aside to cool.
Pouring Butter
2_Put oil and butter into a small sauce pan and cook on low heat until butter is melted, mix and set aside to cool.
Filling
3_Grind the nuts rough, mix cardamom and cinnamon, set aside.
Making the dough
5_ In to a big bowl add eggs, yogurt, oil, salt, milk, baking powder and vanilla essence. Mix everything using a spoon or spatula. Add three and half cups of flour, again mix. Now add the other half cup of flour little by little. Sometimes you may have to add all the flour or sometimes two to three tablespoons have to be left out. Depends on how big the eggs are. Make smooth dough and divide the dough into twelve portions and smooth each portion. To make this baklava you will need only eight portions. Cover the other four portions of dough with cling wrap and keep in fridge for another day.
3_Sprinkle some corn flour and roll each portion into a five inch disk, when all eight portions have been rolled. Stack one on the other apply a thick layer of corn flour between in each stacking. Stack four disks for a single roll. So you must have two stacked thick disks.
Assembling baklava
4_Keep an 8×12 inch baking tray ready, no need to apply anything in it, apply a generous amount of corn flour on the rolling area and roll each stacked disk as thin as you can you must be able to see rolling table through the thin disk. Now slowly and gently peel one disk from the staked four disk(This will be very easy if thick corn flour was applied when staking). Peel and cover the baking tray with the peeled dough, fold in the hanging out sides of the dough into the tray. Again peel another disk from the rolled disk and apply on top of baking tray.
5_So now there must be two layer of rolled dough in the tray. Sprinkle generous amount of nuts on top of dough. Like this make as much layers as you can and the top must be dough, when finished layering cut the dough gently into squares or diamond shape using a sharp knife.
6_ Pour the melted butter and oil mixture evenly on top of no baked baklava. Bake at 200 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes or until the top is nicely browned.
7_ Take the baked baklava tray onto a cooling rack and right away pour the sugar syrup on top, distributing evenly on all areas. Let the baklava sit like this until it cools down when cool chill for 2 hours and serve, before serving put a teaspoon of grounded pistachios on top of each slice of baklava.
Note:
– It’s not a must to use all three kinds of nuts, you can use even one kind of nuts.
– when peeling the stacked and rolled thin disks sometimes it will tear and that’s not a problem, that won’t be seen on the final baklava.
– Chilling baklava makes it tastier and crisp. I have noticed that the nest day it tastes better.