Baklava - Greek Honey-Walnut Dessert

We originally shared this Baklava - Greek Honey Walnut Dessert in our Greek Christmas Cookie recipe ebook that so many people downloaded over the holidays. While baklavá isn’t exactly a cookie, you’ll find individual pieces of this buttered filo-layered dessert on many a Greek holiday platter. An iconic dessert found throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, in Greece baklavá is defined by walnuts rather than pistachio nuts, as well as a liberal dose of cinnamon and clove.  Try making baklava with our easy recipe - it's not as hard as it looks!

Ingredients to make Baklava 

1 lb phyllo dough sheets

2 cups coarsely chopped almonds

2 cups coarsely chopped walnuts

2 tbsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground clove + whole cloves for decoration

5 cups melted butter

Ingredients for the Baklava Syrup

3 cups sugar

2 cups water

1/2 cup Tragano Greek Organics honey

The peel of a thoroughly cleaned lemon

How to make Baklava

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

In a bowl, blend with a fork the almonds, walnuts, cinnamon and ground clove.

Using a pastry brush and the melted butter, grease a 10x15 baking dish. Carefully place a sheet of phyllo on the bottom and brush it lightly with more melted butter.

Place another phyllo sheet on top and brush that with melted butter, too. Repeat until you have four buttered sheets of phyllo.

Sprinkle some of the nut mixture on top and then cover with two buttered sheets of phyllo. Sprinkle more of the nut mixture on top and then cover again with two more buttered sheets of phyllo. Repeat until you’re left with just four sheets of phyllo to cover the last layer of nuts. Be sure to butter each of those last four sheets.

Using a very sharp pointed knife, cut the finished baklavá into squares or diamonds and add a whole clove in the center of each piece.

Pour any remaining melted butter over the baklava and spray lightly with some cold water. If you like, you can freeze your baklavá, covering with plastic wrap.

When you’re ready to bake the baklavá, take off the plastic wrap if you’ve frozen it, or pop your freshly prepared pan in the oven.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until golden brown.

In the meantime, prepare your syrup by boiling the ingredients in a small pan for 5 minutes.

As soon as your baklavá comes out of the oven, poor the hot syrup evenly over it.

Let cool and then transfer the pieces to individual paper baking cups and to your holiday platter. Enjoy!

Tip: if you have any leftover syrup or nut mixture, pour them over vanilla ice cream for an amazing dessert topping!

Buy the artisanal Greek products in this recipe