Honey Pistachio Baklava

This honey pistachio baklava is an adaptation from a family friend's recipe. He made my family homemade baklava that was phenomenal. I wrote down his recipe on my iPhone back in 2013 and emailed it to myself. Over the years I made some slight tweaks (to an already amazing recipe) for the perfect honey pistachio baklava.

What I Love About This Recipe

Pistachio baklava is an unbelievably delicious dessert recipe. The crispy buttery filo layers stuffed with honey nut pistachio layers. If you ever eat baklava at restaurants, you will notice that there isn't much of a nut layer. This has a huge, flavorful nut layer that takes this baklava to the next level. This is one of my favorite desserts.

Ingredients You'll Need:

• Filo dough: The absolute must for the baklava is filo dough. Baklava is not baklava without it, so there's no point in trying an alternative. I've found filo dough in regular US grocery stores and internationally in the freezer section of the grocery store.
• Flower water and orange blossom water: These might be difficult to find at a regular grocery store. You can find them for sure in a Middle Eastern shop. If you can't find these ingredients, you can leave them out. Alternatively, you can add a cinnamon stick and 6 whole cloves when making the simple syrup.
• Nuts: This recipe is a mixture of pistachios and walnuts. You can also use all pistachio or all walnuts. Make sure to get raw nuts that are unsalted.
• Honey: I recommend using any type of honey.

How To Make Simple Syrup

Prepare the simple syrup. You want the simple syrup to be at room temperature before pouring it onto the cooked baklava. Otherwise, the baklava will lose its crunchiness and get overly sticky. In a small pot on the stove, add water and sugar on high heat. Bring to a boil. Add lemon juice, flower water, and blossom water. Boil for 5 minutes. Remove and allow it to cool down.

How To Make The Honey Pistachio Mixture

Make the nut mixture. You can play around with your favorite ratios and nuts. I like making my baklava with walnuts and pistachios combined. Pulse the nuts in a food processor and pour into a bowl.

Make the honey syrup. In a separate bowl combine the sugar, flower water, orange blossom water, honey, and simple syrup. Mix the honey syrup and crushed nuts altogether.

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How to Assemble Baklava

Heat up the butter on the stovetop or in the microwave. Pull out your thawed filo leaves and get your workstation ready. When you unwrap filo dough, it will be very fragile. I had some anxiety unwrapping the dough when I saw how the outer layers were already breaking. Don't worry, this is completely normal! Cover the filo dough with a damp towel so the layers don't dry out.

Lay the first filo layer. I recommend starting with the broken filo layers at the bottom because no one sees what the bottom looks like. But as you layer the filo to the top, you will want a nice unbroken filo piece for the top layer.

Spread the love and the butter. The filo dough is twice the size of a 9" x 13" pan. The original recipe calls for cutting the filo sheet in half and spreading butter in between each and every sheet. However, I prefer to save time and calories by just folding the filo sheet in half and spreading the butter after each double layer.

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Make about 4 double layers of filo (equivalent to 8 single layers of filo) before adding the first layer of nut mixture (there will be a total of 3 layers of the nut mixture). You will then do the following: filo, butter, filo, butter, filo, butter, nut mixture, filo, butter, filo, butter, filo, butter, nut mixture, filo, butter, filo, butter, filo, butter. In the end, you will have 3 layers of nut mixture.

Cut the baklava before baking. I'm still working on my geometry skills as you can see in the image below.

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Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes at 375 ℉ (190 ℃). Remove from oven and immediately pour the cooled simple syrup in the cracks in between each baklava piece. Add chopped nuts on top.

Options

• Substitute ghee for butter. In fact, many baklava recipes use ghee, however, I prefer the taste of butter.
• If you like more of a honey taste, you can substitute more honey for the sugar in the honey syrup. If you would like to omit honey, you can substitute more sugar.
• You can try a variety of nuts and nut combinations with pecans, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pistachios, and walnuts.

How to Store Baklava

You can leave baklava covered on the countertop or in the fridge. I prefer leaving my baklava on the countertop in a glass container with a snap lid.

This recipe makes a TON, so another option is freezing some of the pieces. When you are ready to eat a piece of baklava, just remove from the freezer and give it some time to thaw to room temperature.

Try Some Other Lebanese Dishes

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