“What’s your favorite dessert?”

“Baklava.”

I asked an old coworker once and that was her answer. I was a bit confused. I had no idea what baklava was nor have I had any desire to try it. At least, until a few weeks ago.

During a trip back to Alameda, some friends took me out for lunch at a Mediterranean place on Park St. One friend particularly really enjoyed eating here and hyped it up for me. Maybe it has been a long while since I’ve had Mediterranean food but oh man, it lived up to her hype and everything tasted pretty dang good. One standout item from that place was getting Greek froyo topped with pieces of baklava. It surprised me of how good baklava was, which thus inspired me to make it. This past week, I finally got a chance to make it, using this recipe from the blog, Once Upon a Chef.

Luckily, for this dish, I already had most of the ingredients on hand except for the phyllo dough. Prior to this, I’ve only had one experience working with phyllo dough, which was when I mistakenly bought it instead of frozen puff pastry to make some peach tartlets. Naively, I thought since the boxes and the doughs looked pretty similar, it could be used as a replacement.

I discovered how wrong I was that day.

Anyway.

Making this dish was relatively straightforward. I toasted the walnuts for about 10 minutes at 350F (I still stand by toasting nuts whenever you can. It’s sooo worth it), followed by combining it with some sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg and pulsing it in a food processor until it had the consistency of pebbly sand.

I made the syrup next, which was also very straightforward. After combining honey, water, sugar, lemon juice, and a cinnamon stick, I tried to simmer it at low heat. Other than being surprised at how quickly the syrup boiled at low heat, this was largely uneventful.

The more interesting part came when it came to assembling this dessert together. I took out the thawed out phyllo dough and came up with a plan to sort of trim it down to fit the 8×8 glass baking dish I had. After awkwardly cutting around the glass dish after using it as a mold, I was ready to start assembling my layers.

As you can see, the trimmed sheets were tad too big for the bottom of the dish. At first, I tried to trim it down with scissors but found that too unwieldy. So I just folded the edges into the dish. For every two layers, I brushed it generously over with butter. At around the 14th layer, I sprinkled 1/3rd of my walnut mixture and layered six more layers and sprinkled down another 1/3rd, and repeated it until I had an assembled dish. I briefly ran out of phyllo sheets towards the end and ended up repurposing some phyllo sheet scraps to make more layers.

At first, I thought about cutting it by squares but decided to go a lil more fancy and do the diamond cut instead. The way to do the diamond cut is by first, cutting 4-5 vertical lines across, followed a series of diagonal cuts. It was now ready to be baked!

After about 50-55 minutes in a 350F oven, the top of the dish was golden brown and I could hear some bubbling noises inside. It looked pretty good. After a 5-minute cooldown period, I spooned about 3/4ths of the honey syrup into cuts of the dessert. Maybe it was to hold this dish together so it wasn’t just loose sheets of phyllo dough in case if I didn’t put enough butter?

Anyway, since I’m an impatient person, I waited ten minutes before trying to stuff a piece in my mouth. It was very flaky and gave me the impression that this dessert was 70% phyllo and 30% walnuts. I was a little underwhelmed but decided to see where it would take me if I waited overnight as the recipe mentioned.

This is why overnight resting/chilling periods are important. The extra day wait made the dessert structure seem a bit more cohesive and allowed the baklava’s flavors time to actually meld together. The cinnamon walnut flavors came through much stronger on the second day. Overall, I liked the flavor (though I would have used more walnut filling in retrospect) and this was an interesting thing to try making. I’m not sure if I’ll work with phyllo dough again anytime soon but at least it was an experience. Bonus points since it was enough to bring for a potluck dish for team meeting dinner too.

It’s not my favorite but I can see why it is for others.