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Ginger and Cardamom Baklava
Baklava is one of my all-time favourite desserts! You really can’t go wrong with crispy, buttery filo, roasty toasty nuts and a sweet, infused syrup. Using brown butter adds huge depth of flavour and the ginger and cardamom add a lovely spiced twist. It’s the perfect dessert to make to for a crowd – they’ll be very impressed!
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 5 hours
- Yield: 12 1x
Ingredients
Scale
- 300g shelled unsalted pistachios
- 300g unsalted walnuts
- 3 tbsp ground cardamom
- 350g salted butter
- 14 sheets of filo pastry
- 600g granulated sugar
- 1 tbsp orange blossom water
- 400ml water
- 200g fresh ginger, thinly sliced
- 1 lemon, sliced
Instructions
- Heat your oven to 150°C fan.
- Blitz the pistachios and walnuts in a food processor until finely chopped.
- Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. It will bubble for a few minutes. As the bubbles die down, the milk solids will sink to the bottom and turn brown as they caramelise. Once the butter smells nice and nutty and has changed from pale yellow to brown, take the pan off the heat, add a generous pinch of salt and whisk to dissolve.
- Pass the brown butter through a sieve, season generously with salt and mix to dissolve. Set aside to cool slightly.
- Trim the filo to fit a 35cm x 25cm baking tin. Brush the interior with some of the brown butter.
- Place 1 sheet of filo on the base of the tin. Brush with butter. Repeat with 4 more filo sheets, for a total of 5 buttered sheets.
- Spread half of the nut mixture over the filo. Top with 4 buttered filo sheets.
- Spread the remaining nuts over the filo. Top with 5 buttered filo sheets.
- Use a sharp knife to cut deep lines into the pastry to create triangles, diamonds or squares.
- Bake the baklava for 1 hour.
- Shortly before it’s done, place the sugar, water and orange blossom water in a saucepan. Stir to dissolve over medium heat, then add the ginger and lemon slices.
- Cook until the sugar syrup reaches 106°C. If you don’t have a food thermometer, cook until the syrup reduces to the consistency of running honey. This should take around 15 mins.
- Pour the syrup over the hot baklava and leave to cool to room temperature. Once cooled, you can tuck in and enjoy.
