- Did you know there's no need to butter every single layer
of phyllo dough when making baklava?
This quick pour method is gonna change your mind
about how to make homemade baklava.
(light music)
Hey everyone, it's Yumna, AKA Feel Good Foodie.
And baklava, AKA (speaking in a foreign language) in Arabic,
is one of my favorite desserts of all time,
but I haven't really made it much at home
until last year when I discovered this quick method
that takes as little as 15 minutes to prep.
Baklava's a very popular Middle Eastern dessert
that we eat during Ramadan, during special occasions,
and all kinds of family gatherings.
What makes the Lebanese version very unique
is the aromatic simple syrup that we use on top.
I'm gonna show you how to make that simple syrup
and how to make the easiest baklava of your life.
So let's get started.
The first step I like to do is to make the simple syrup,
and I even prefer to do this the day before
so that the simple syrup is nice and cold.
You wanna make sure that it's cold
because it's gonna hit the hot baklava
and just create the best consistency
when they mesh together.
All right, to start, we're gonna do,
sometimes you can do equal parts sugar and water.
I like to do a little bit less water than sugar.
So I have a cup of cane sugar.
You can use any granulated sugar.
And 3/4 of a cup of water.
And I'm also adding a little bit of lemon juice
because I love the tartness of it
with the sweetness of the simple syrup.
We're gonna bring the mixture to a boil
and then we're gonna simmer for five to seven minutes
until all the sugar is dissolved
and it's nice and smooth.
Once the sugar is dissolved,
we're gonna go ahead and add the rose water.
You can also do orange blossom water.
Either one is basically rose petals or orange blossom petals
that's stepped with water.
So it's very fragrant and aromatic
and it's the key indicator
of a Lebanese (speaking in a foreign language).
We love the stuff.
We throw it on fruit salad.
We throw it in rice pudding.
I just eat it like on top of regular fruit, whenever.
It's just like so good and it just reminds me of home.
So now, the simple syrup is ready,
and we're gonna go ahead and let it cool
for about 30 minutes and then we can also put it
in the fridge so it gets nice and cold.
After the simple syrup is done,
it's time to process the walnuts and the sugar.
You can use any kinda nuts here.
You can also use pistachios,
but walnuts are the most popular
in the Lebanese version of baklava.
So we're gonna start with three cups of walnuts,
and to that, we're gonna add 1/2 a cup of cane sugar
or any kind of granulated sugar you wanna use.
And then just give it a roll
until everything is finely chopped.
It'll take 15 to 20 seconds.
You want it to look just like that.
We made the simple syrup,
we crushed the walnuts with the sugar,
and now it's time to just put it all together.
So I've got my tools here. (laughing)
Looks like I'm going into surgery,
but it's actually a really, really simple method
and you're gonna see when you watch this,
it's so much easier than buttering
every single layer of phyllo.
So to start, we're going to add a little bit of butter
to the bottom of a 9-by-14 baking pan.
And I'm using clarified butter or ghee
for this recipe.
You might be tempted to use regular butter
instead of ghee, but I highly recommend using ghee instead
because this is basically the fat content
of regular butter.
So you're not gonna get any of the liquid parts,
which means not soggy baklava.
And I wanna show you
what the clarified butter looks like before.
So this is how it comes when you buy it.
It's nice and solid.
And you just wanna microwave it for 30 seconds
or one minute so it becomes liquid like this.
And I love this container because I just peel it off
and then I can just microwave it and it's glass.
And now it's time for the phyllo dough.
This is one pound of phyllo
and it's the large size that's perfect
for a 9-by-13, 9-by-14 baking dish.
Now we want to carefully open the phyllo,
and you'll notice that some of the sheets might be ripped
and that's totally okay.
It's very normal for some of them to start to rip.
And what we wanna do is we wanna measure it
so that it's the same size as our baking dish.
So there's different sizes of phyllo.
This is the jumbo size.
Sometimes it comes in like in half the size.
If it comes like this, all you need to do
is just cut it so that it's the size of the baking dish.
So just work with it, whatever size that you get.
So it's about half of this.
I'm gonna go ahead and cut right along here.
And I also recommend cutting it also lengthwise
so that it fits the pan perfectly.
This is optional, but it just kind of lays so much better
in the baking dish when everything is nice and cut.
I recommend just kind of taking off a little bit
from the front.
And now it's time to assemble everything.
We'll take half the phyllo sheets and place it
on the baking dish.
And if you wanted to, you can actually put
a little bit more on the bottom than on the top,
or you can just keep it exactly even.
I like to add probably like six extra sheets or so
to the bottom so that the top is a little bit lighter
than the bottom.
So there's 40 sheets altogether.
We'll have about 26 at the bottom
and about, let's do the math, (laughing)
16 at the top.
Or you could just do 20 and 20.
Now it's time to add the crushed walnuts
and sugar mixture right on top of the phyllo.
And now we lay the other half right on top.
I like to try to see if I can have
the prettiest phyllo on top,
but it doesn't always happen, so it's totally fine.
For the next part, we're gonna take a super sharp knife,
we're gonna point it downwards,
and we're gonna create little diamond shapes
all throughout the baklava.
So this is how I like to do it.
And make sure to press firmly down
with your other hand so that the phyllo sheets
don't move around too much.
Make sure when you're cutting into it,
you're going all the way down and touching the bottom
of the baking pan.
You wanna make sure that you're cutting
through all 40 layers and all the walnuts,
'cause that butter needs to seep through later.
So I like to do nine cuts diagonally
and then four cuts horizontally.
So and it's so much easier just flip it to cut it.
And as much as possible and as hard as it is,
you wanna try to cut as fast as possible
because the phyllo's gonna start to dry out
and we just wanna make sure to move it along pretty quickly.
And now it's time for the magic.
Notice I only used this brush once
just to kind of brush the bottom of the baking dish.
We don't need it at all for this step.
You're not gonna butter all the layers.
I cut through all the phyllo
and now we're just going to go ahead and pour
the melted clarified butter right on top
and it's gonna seep through all the layers
and just butter everything perfectly.
To make it easier, I do recommend using something
with a spout.
(light music)
Yes, it's a lot of butter.
And no, this is not a diet recipe.
So just pour on all that butter
and then what I recommend doing is just kind of tilting
the pan a little bit so that you get all those corners
nice and buttery.
It also helps to just let this set for five minutes
before popping it in the oven.
Once it's set, you can bake it in the oven at 350
for 50 to 60 minutes until the top
is nice and golden and flaky.
All right, it just came out of the oven.
And it's important as soon as it comes out of the oven
to hit it with the cold simple syrup.
(baklava sizzling)
And as tempting as it is to dig right into this,
you wanna let it set for at least an hour
just so everything can get nice and solidified
and it just forms the perfect texture that way.
So see you in an hour.
All right, we've let the (speaking in a foreign language)
set for about two hours now
and it smells so good and I'm so ready
to show you guys what this looks like.
The first time I shared this recipe on Instagram,
there was some skepticism about how good
this could possibly be since you're not buttering
every single layer of phyllo.
Now yes, it is better to butter every layer,
but that takes an hour plus sometimes.
This method only takes 15 minutes,
and honestly, it's 99% just as good.
I'm gonna show you guys too how flaky and beautiful it is.
So what we like to do too when we serve it
is we like to add some crushed pistachios on top.
The pistachios is iconic Lebanese style baklava,
and I know that every region in the Middle East
and even around the world just has different ways
that they do baklava.
So this is kind of our take on it
from the Lebanese style.
All right, got tons of pistachios on there
and I'm gonna go ahead and serve up a couple of 'em.
It does kind of,
the top layer will kinda flake off sometimes,
but look how good that looks.
It's nice and compact.
It stays together so well.
And then, look at the bottom layers.
They're nice and soaked with all that simple syrup
and all that ghee clarified butter.
And time for the taste test.
(baklava crunching)
I cannot believe
this is homemade (speaking in a foreign language).
It's so good.
It tastes almost as good as the store-bought ones,
and I'm pretty proud of myself
and I just cannot believe how easy this recipe is.
One more bite.
(baklava crunching)
There's so much to love about this recipe,
from the simplicity of the ingredients,
the quickness of the pour method,
and the absolute amazing taste.
It's so good.
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I'm gonna share this now with Video Matt
to see what he thinks of the recipe.
Oh, I hear the crunch.
He likes it. (laughing)
He likes the recipe and I hope you guys do too.
See you guys next time.