Diwali Delicacies

The ‘festival of lights’ is the most prominent celebration in India. Diwali is celebrated with much fanfare throughout the country. It is the beginning of a new year according to the Hindu culture. Every year we keep our spirits high and celebrate the good over evil. This festive season wherein, families and friends indulge in decorating home with diyas, rangoli, playing cards, and eating gazillion amount of sweets. 

Diwali or any other festival is incomplete without sweets. Laddoo’s, gulab jamun, Kaju katli, soan papdi, coconut barfi, petha, halwa, and so many more. On this joyous occasion, I made “Baklava” and gave a little Indian touch to it. Baklava is characteristic of middle eastern cuisine. It is a sweet dessert made of layers of phyllo pastry filled with chopped nuts and sweetened and held together with sugar syrup. This rich sweet pastry was served to royalties but was also common among the locals.

I made this for the first time and it came out quite good. This was a whole new experience. To give it an Indian touch I made jaggery syrup instead of sugar and jaggery is a healthy alternative. The filling is mainly made up of nuts and some spice but here, I added mawa barfi and rose petals to the nut’s mixture.

Baklava has nice crisp pastry, a nutty flavor, and is soaked in syrup. The different textures and flavors are unbelievably good!

I swear you’re going to love this. It does take a lot of time and effort but be patient with it. So, let’s see what does it take to make this beautiful baklava.

 

Baklava barfi.

Ingredients:

phyllo pastry

• 2 cups flour.
• 1 tsp salt.
• 1 tsp baking powder.
• 1 tsp white vinegar.
• 6 tbsp  melted ghee or butter.
• ½ cup of warm water.

For the filling

• ½ cup roasted pistachio. 
• ½ cup roasted almonds.
• ½ cup roasted cashew nuts.
• 150 grams of mawa barfi.
• 1/3 cup dried rose petals.
• 3 tbsp honey.
• 2 tbsp ghee.

Syrup:

• ½ cup of honey.
• ½ cup jaggery.
• 1 cup of water.
• Half a juice of a lemon.
• Small cinnamon stick.

Procedure:

Phyllo pastry:

• Take a large bowl, add flour, salt, baking powder, vinegar, and 6 tbsp ghee. Mix it well.
• Add warm water to it and mix it until the dough comes together.
• Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
• After resting the dough, knead the dough for 10 minutes or until smooth on a floured work surface.
• Divide the dough into 20 small portions. Roll each portion into a ball.
• Dust the work surface with flour and flatten the dough ball and roll out into a circle. Keep applying flour to avoid sticking. Roll it into nice thin sheets. Put it aside on a plate and dust it with flour again. Cover it with a kitchen towel.
• Roll out the rest of the dough balls into thin sheets. Generously use flour while rolling out the sheets. 
• Stack up the sheets onto each other. Make sure you dust enough flour while placing one sheet onto another. We don’t want the sheets to stick together. Covering with a cloth will prevent it from drying out.

There are readymade phyllo pastry available in the market. If you want you would use them instead of making your own. Homemade pastry is as good as the store brought.

Filling:

• Finely chop all the roasted nuts. 
• Crumble the mawa barfi.
• Empty the nut mixture into a bowl, add dried rose petals, honey, mawa barfi, and 2 tbsp ghee. Mix it well.

Syrup:

• Take a saucepan, add jaggery, honey, water, lemon juice, and cinnamon.
• Place it on the stove and mix it well. 
• Bring it to boil and let it cook until it becomes a little thick.
• Let it cool down.

Assembling the baklava:

• Take a 6-inch baking tin, generously grease the tin with ghee
• Take one sheet of phyllo and place it in the pan. Brush the top of the phyllo sheet with the melted ghee. You can trim the pastry if it doesn’t fit the pan. Repeat the same process with 8 layers of phyllo pastry while brushing each with melted ghee.
• Distribute about ½ of the nut mixture evenly onto it.
• Continue assembling the baklava, one sheet of phyllo pastry at a time using another 5 of the phyllo. Again, brush each layer with a bit of the melted ghee.
• Distribute the rest of the nut mixture evenly on it.
• Finish the remaining 7 sheets of the phyllo pastry following the same process, laying one sheet at a time and brushing each layer with melted ghee. Brush the very top sheet of phyllo with ghee.
• Cut the baklava into small square or diamond shapes. 
• Brush the top with ghee.
• Bake it in a preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes or until golden brown.
• Once the baklava is baked, remove it from the oven and pour the honey- jaggery syrup onto hot baklava evenly and add some more chopped nuts.
• Leave it for a minimum of 2 hours at room temperature or overnight. So that it soaks in all the beautiful syrup.
• And your baklava is ready to serve!

This might seem intimidating and a tedious process but this isn’t as difficult as it seems. It is easy to make as long as you follow the steps carefully. If you end up trying it out, trust me you’ll enjoy the process. Also do let me know how it turns out.

Thank you for reading this out.

Happy Diwali from mine to yours! 

Love, Love.