Hazelnut Chocolate Baklava

To say I have been over-indulging in baklava since I’ve been in Turkey would be a bit of an understatement.

Baklava is a strange one for me – I can’t even remember when I tried it for the first time – but it has always been something I knew I’d love, even before I had ever eaten it. Have you ever experienced that before? What am I saying, of course you have. We all have that experience every day now thanks to Pinterest. You can just take one look at a photo of something and know that things will never return to normal until you make it. Like I did when I first read the recipe for these baklava muffins.

Anyhoo, there is baklava on every street corner and in every supermarket in Turkey. But this doesn’t mean that it’s all good. Some of it is disappointingly mediocre. And as much of it is sold by weight, it can also turn out to be a very expensive treat.

So, knowing that I’d be able to get hold of all the ingredients in the store here in Antalya, and finally having an oven again (albeit a small countertop one – hey I’ll take whatever I can get these days), I wanted to make baklava. But not just any baklava – hazelnut chocolate baklava.

Here’s another funny thing about me and baklava – I don’t really like honey. 

I love the way honey looks and its sweet stickiness, but whenever I bring myself to eat it at home, there is an aftertaste to the sweetness that just doesn’t sit well with me.

Then I came to Turkey and started eating real honey; you know, the stuff with actual honeycomb in it. Slathered over kaymak at breakfast. It was like a lightbulb going off. “So this is what real honey tastes like” I thought to myself. I had always been too cheap to buy the really good stuff at the supermarket. Now I was surrounded by it.

Now let me tell you another funny thing about baklava, something that had managed to elude me even though I was eating my bodyweight in it: there actually isn’t that much honey in baklava. Am I the only one who never realised this? The delicious stickiness comes from a sugar syrup with a small amount of honey in it. How foolish I feel.

So, my dear friends, that is great news for you and I (well, if you’re a bit cheap like me), because it means we can use the cheaper honey from the supermarket and no-one will ever know! We can even manage to fool our own tastebuds. Score.

Hazelnut Chocolate Baklava

Recipe by Julia

Servings

30

servings

Prep time

10

minutes

Cooking time

1

hour 

Ingredients

• For the baklava

• 1 package (16 ounces, 14-inch x 9-inch sheet size) filo (phyllo) pastry, thawed if frozen

• 1 1/4 cups butter, melted (250g)

• 1/2 pound (225g) finely chopped walnuts

• 1/2 pound (225g) finely chopped hazelnuts

• 120g milk chocolate, chopped into small pieces

• 3/4 cup sugar

• 1-1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

• For the syrup

• Juice of 1 orange

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 1/2 cup water

• 1/2 cup honey

Directions

• Grease a 15 inch x 10 inch x 1 inch baking tin and preheat the oven to 325F / 170C.
• Unroll the package of filo pastry; cut stack into a 10-1/2 inch x 9 inch rectangle. Repeat with remaining pastry. Discard any leftover scraps.
• Line bottom of the prepared tin with two sheets of filo (the sheets will overlap slightly). Brush with butter. Repeat these layers 8 times. (Keep dough covered with plastic wrap and a damp towel until ready to use to prevent it from drying out.)
• In a large bowl, combine the nuts, chocolate chips, sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle 2 cups over the top layer of filo.
• Top with four more layers of filo, buttering each layer as you go. Top with 2 or more cups nut mixture.
• Top with four layers filo, buttering each layer; top with remaining nut mixture. Top with the remaining filo, brushing each layer with butter.
• Drizzle any remaining butter over top.
• Using a sharp knife, cut baklava into 1-1/2-in. diamonds. Bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes or until golden brown.
• Twenty minutes before the end of the cooking time, combine the syrup ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat and then simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes.
• Allow the hot baklava to cool for a couple of minutes out of the oven before evenly pouring the syrup over the top (baklava should still be warm when you do this).
• Cool baklava completely in pans on wire racks before serving.

Notes

• Adapted from Taste of Home