Baklava recipe

Created by
  Print    Enlarge text

Rating:

5/ 5 stars 111 Votes
  • Cuisine: Syrian

Sweets play an important role in the social customs of Syria as generous offerings of these sugary delights are brought by guests in appreciation of their friend’s hospitality. Pastry chefs and home-cooks make huge trays of sweets that are typically layers of filo pastry coated in ghee, or semolina cake with crushed nuts or clotted cream (ashta) fillings and dripping with sugar syrup. For a simpler treat the modest barazik biscuit, made with sesame seeds and pistachios, are a mor’ish alternative.

Amongst the vast array of pastries, cakes and biscuits loved in Syria, baklava stands out as an all time favourite, particularly when made with pistachios from Syria’s beautiful orchards. 

You might also like our Turkish baklava recipe from Food Lovers’ Guide to Australia. Or view our culturally diverse dessert recipes.

Ingredients

350g ghee or unsalted butter
375g pack filo pastry
2-3 cups of walnuts or pistachio
2 tbsp of sugar
2 teaspoons orange blossom water
1 tsp of rose water

Syrup
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
½ tsp rose water
1/2 tsp orange blossom water
Squeeze of lemon juice


View conversion table

Preparation

 

Melt the butter or ghee. Using a baking tray, 10 x 30cm, brush melted butter on base of the tray and start layering filo sheets, by placing one sheet down on top of the buttered surface below, and brush melted butter on the top side of each sheet.

 

Once half the filo sheets (about 20) are layered it’s time for the filling. To prepare the filling, crush the nuts slightly in a food processor. Remove the nuts and place in large bowl. Add sugar and orange blossom and rose water and mix.

Spread the nut filling over the top sheet to form an even layer to the edge of the tray.
Then continue the layering and buttering the sheets of filo pastry.

Carefully cut the pastry into diamond shapes. Pour some of the remaining butter over the pastry. Bake in a pre-heated oven 175-180ºC for about 55 minutes, or until golden brown.

While the pastry is baking, prepare the sugar syrup. Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil for 15 minutes. When the syrup becomes slightly viscous, remove from heat, add the rose water, orange blossom water and mix through, add a squeeze of lemon juice.

Pour the hot syrup over the hot pastry. Let it settle and cool before cutting it. Enjoy!


 

If you enjoyed this Baklava recipe then browse more Syrian recipes, dessert recipes and our most popular hainanese chicken rice recipe.

Syrian Restaurants

Displaying 1 of 1 Syrian Restaurants.

  Restaurant Book Online Suburb
1. Gingerlee   Brunswick East

View all Syrian restaurants | Start a new search

Comments (24)

Previous Page 1 | 2 | 3 | Next
19 Aug 2011 04:12 AEST
Rose Hill
Bacchus Marsh
Ditto - frozen pastry disastrous
Great recipe - but use the fresh filo. The Pampas (Goodman Fielder) frozen pastry sticks together so had to throw it out. Complained to Goodman Fielder, but no-one responded, even though I receipted my email. So much for customer service!! Great recipe and easy to make. I doubled syrup ingredients as we like our baklava nice and gooey!! Great recipe
Agree(4 people agree)
Disagree(0 people disagree)
03 Jul 2011 05:36 AEST
Memo
Liverpool
Baklava
Baklava's is Turkish Origin not Syrian
Agree(3 people agree)
Disagree(11 people disagree)
23 Jun 2011 02:29 AEST
Jack
Collingwood
Rose & Orange blossom water
You'll find the orange blossom & rose water (and all other ingredients) at heaps of places. Any of the middle eastern nut/grains/pulses/grocery stores along sydney road in Coburg, there's a place on Broadway st in reservoir (station end), or Al Alayama(sp?) in Coburg (near corner of Sydney rd and Bell st) or the place on Smith Street in Collingwood called Sonsa Foods. So many places. You'll find it.
Agree(0 people agree)
Disagree(2 people disagree)
17 Apr 2011 03:35 AEST
Mari
Kinsbury
Orange-Blossom adn rosewater
Where can I find the orange blossom water and rose water? please I need your help with this...
Agree(0 people agree)
Disagree(8 people disagree)
30 Mar 2011 06:34 AEST
Sarah
Hills
Tasty!
Made these recently and bought a 375g pack of fresh filo..only had 19 sheets in it, so I had 11 sheets on the bottom and 8 on the top. Next time i'll but two packets. They tasted amazing, and so easy to do; i've never made anything with filo before and this was simple.
Agree(1 people agree)
Disagree(8 people disagree)
23 Oct 2010 04:08 AEST
Marie
Broome
ORANGE BLOSSOM WATER
Where does one find this? In a continental deli or is it hiden in Coles and Woolies somewhere?
Agree(3 people agree)
Disagree(10 people disagree)
16 Oct 2010 11:55 AEST
MK
Auburn, NSW
Must try recipe!
This recipe is easy and failproof! Thank you so much for sharing it with us. One tip from me; if you are making the filling with walnuts you need to crush them finer than the pistachios. The layer of nuts i used (2 cups) was too thick so ill be using a little less next time. Otherwise the syrup was perfect and the layers crispy! Next, to master homemade pastry...
Agree(5 people agree)
Disagree(2 people disagree)
16 Oct 2010 07:04 AEST
Chris
Melbourne
I Heart Baklava
I haven't made Baklava for ~15 years and when I saw this episode was immediately motivated and just made another batch which tastes great. Two tips: 1/ Make the syrup first so it can cool while you make the rest of the dish. 2/ If you want to cut down the construction time when layering, have your significant other help out. I had my wife laying in the philo while I was buttering each layer. Here are some other variations: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/cookies/baklava-coll.html Yummmm!!
Agree(5 people agree)
Disagree(9 people disagree)
   

Comment on this recipe

You have characters left.
Validation ( What's this? ) : This is a captcha-picture. It is used to prevent mass-access by robots.

PLEASE NOTE: All submitted comments become the property of SBS. We reserve the right to edit and/or amend submitted comments. HTML tags other than paragraph, line break, bold or italics will be removed from your comment.

ADVERTISEMENT

Featured Food & Recipes

Hot Tips

More

Coconut milk/cream

It doesn't take that much effort to get the beautiful sweet mellow taste of fresh coconut. Try and source a coconut grater from an Indian shop or grate it yourself. Crack open a coconut, prize the meat from the shell and peel the brown skin away. Pop small chunks into the food processor or grate on a sharp grater.

Glossary

More

Plum Jam

A Croatian spread made from small native plums, it is favoured for baking as it tends to keep its shape rather than spreading while cooking.

 
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
 
 
ADVERTISEMENT