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mardi 18 mars 2014

Some Information About The Dessert Called Baklava

By Luisa Sharpe


Baklava is the name given to a dessert that comes from the Middle East. It is also widely found in the Mediterranean and certain parts of Asia. It dates back to the Ottoman Empire. This pastry dessert is very dense in texture and sweet in taste. Because of how rich it is, it comes divided into small portions.

It is essentially made up of multiple layers of filo pastry with a filling of honey or syrup and also chopped nuts. Though it is prepared in a large pan, it is cut up into much smaller bite-sized portions in different shapes prior to baking. The most common shapes for it are triangles, rectangles or parallelograms.

It is made by laying down many phyllo dough layers in a baking pan. Each layer is coated with melted butter. The chopped nut filling is placed in between the bottom set of layers and the top set of layers. The filling can be made using walnuts, pistachios or even hazelnuts and almonds. The pastry is finished with top layers of more dough.

The cooked pastry is then covered with a very sweet flavored syrup. This syrup can be made of a number of ingredients, commonly honey and sometimes rosewater or other extracts. Turkish areas further amplify this dessert by eating it with ice cream of a milk cream flavor during the summer months, or a preparation named 'kaymak'.

Across the region where the dessert is common, different ways of preparing it are noted, sometimes with additional or substitute ingredients. One of the reasons for varied methods of preparation is religion. An example of this is how the Greeks prepare it using the same number of layers of dough as the number of years Christ lived.

In Armenia, the dessert is called paklava. Ingredients include cloves and also cinnamon. In Georgia, however, ingredients found in the dessert include sour cream and vanilla amongst others. Albanians prepare their dough with egg yolks. In Iran, the taste of the Persian version is much lighter than in the Middle East.

It is possible to buy phyllo dough in the frozen section of the grocery store. While there are many variations on how to make the dessert, it is not hard to make. Start by placing a couple of sheets of the dough in a pan that has been buttered and cover these sheets with melted butter. Repeat this process three more times. Once there are 8 layers of dough, cover the layers with a mixture of chopped nuts and cinnamon. Place two more layers of dough over the nuts, butter them and add more nuts.

Finish the pastry with six to eight layers of dough on top. Cut into diamonds and bake in a preheated oven at 350 F for fifty minutes. To make the syrup, boil together a cup of water and a cup of white sugar. Add to the mixture one teaspoon of vanilla extract and also a half cup of honey. Let it simmer for twenty minutes then pour over the pastry as soon as it comes out of the oven. Serve at room temperature.




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