Puff Pastry Baklava

Puff pastry baklava is beautiful homemade pistachio baklava soaked in aromatic sugar syrup and made quick and easy with the help of puff pastry!

This post has a lot of details to help with the finer points but feel free to skip through, check out the step-by-step photos, or jump right to the recipe card.

If you've ever made homemade baklava then you know it's a labor of love. Most commonly made with phyllo pastry, when making baklava from scratch each individual sheet of phyllo pastry has to be brushed with oil (or butter) and laid out in evenly aligned successive layers, usually sandwiching a layer of ground nuts.

The whole thing is baked until golden and then a beautifully flavorful rosewater syrup is poured over top while the baklava is still hot.

It takes some time but the effort is so worth it for the incomparable taste and texture of baklava made in your own kitchen.

But for those instances when you don't have time to make baklava from scratch, you can get pretty close by substituting puff pastry, which you use as is, rolled with ground pistachio into little carpet and drenched in rosewater syrup.

With just a few simple ingredients you can have this luscious, aromatic, and beautiful puff pastry baklava on the table in no time.

Texturally, this definitely is not a traditional interpretation of baklava. It's decidedly softer with a more cake-like consistency. But the flavor is legit.

As far as culinary interpretation goes, it should be noted that there are a lot of varieties of baklava made in many countries around the world with many regional variations.

In fact, according to the placenta cake theory of baklava, the dessert has its origins in the Byzantine layered cheese and honey pie known as placenta, which is where other modern phyllo cheese pies originate (like Greek spanakopita or Bulgarian banitsa), including Romanian cheese pie which has stuck close to the original name and is called placinta cu telemea.

The point is, foods are born and they evolve into new and interesting things in the hands of different cultures and individuals.

Ingredients for Puff Pastry Baklava

This recipe is really simple. There are a few base ingredients that you really need to make it work but I provide substitutions wherever possible.

After the base ingredients, it's all about flavoring! There are a lot of different options so you'll definitely be able to find a combination you have on hand and also that makes it your own.

Base ingredients

Puff pastry: The recipe calls for a package of puff pastry which for me was one roughly rectangular sheet that weighs 270 grams or 10oz and measures 34 by 26cm or 13 by 10 inches. This is just for reference of course so you can gauge whether the puff pastry you use is roughly the same size. Unless your puff pastry sheet is substantially bigger or smaller then the amount of filling and syrup should still work.

Ground pistachios: Ground pistachios are the filling for this baklava. It's much easier if you can find already shelled and ground pistachios. You could also substitute a different nut like walnuts or cashews. Or even combine a few different nuts.

Cinnamon: The cinnamon adds a bit of flavor to the ground nuts.

Salt: To avoid a very sweet dish being way too sweet, add a bit of salt in the ground nuts and the sugar syrup for flavor balance and depth.

Sugar + water = sugar syrup: Sugar syrup is just sugar and water (and a bit of salt for balance) heated together until they become syrup. This recipe calls for 0.75 cup of sugar syrup (made with a 1:1 ratio of sugar to water so 0.75 cup sugar and 0.75 cup water) - you may need a bit more or less depending on the size of your pastry sheet.

Butter: For greasing up the baking sheet and for extra flavor.

Flavoring ingredients

This recipe is made with a few flavouring ingredients:

• Cinnamon;
• Rosewater;
• Orange blossom water.

These combine to give the baklava a nice, warm and aromatic flavour. If you don't have all these ingredients on hand, you can just use cinnamon if that's all you have.

Alternatively, there are a lot of nice options including:

• Orange zest - added to the syrup;
• Cardamom - mixed in with the nuts;
• Pumpkin pie spice - mixed in with the nuts.

You can take it in a lot of different directions but you get the idea. Nice warming dessert spices are great in baklava.

Equipment

You will need a fairly small baking tray for this recipe unless you are scaling the recipe up. The baking tray I'm using here is ceramic and measures approx. 16 by 21cm / 6 by 8 inches. You can also use metal or even glass.

Just keep in mind that the instructions on cutting and placement of the baklava rolls in the section below is based on my small baking tray so you might need to make adjustments to fit the dimensions of yours.

Instructions

1. Preliminary steps

There are a few preliminary steps:

1. Grease the baking sheet with the butter;
2. Combine the ground pistachios with cinnamon and salt;
3. Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan. Mix and set aside until the baklava is almost out of the oven.

2. Assembling the baklava

After the preliminary steps you're ready to assemble the puff pastry baklava.

1. Prepare your work surface. You'll need space to roll out the puff pastry sheet, a small buttered baking dish, a sharp knife, a rolling pin.
2. Roll out the puff pastry slightly so its about 1-2mm thick as shown in photo 2 below.
3. Put the dried nuts all over the puff pastry. Use a sharp knife to cut the sheet in a way that will fit the width of your baking tray. For me this meant I could cut it in half, and had a little excess on the ends that I was able to use to full in the last row in my baking dish. You will have to use your judgment to see the best way to cut your pastry sheet because you probably wont have the exact same dimension pastry sheet or baking pan that I am using here.

Once the sheet is cut into large pieces the width of your baking dish, start to roll them up like a carpet until the roll is approximately the thickness of a cigar - for me that meant 3 rolls.

If your puff pastry is the same thickness as mine then it should probably be about the same - but depends a bit on the dimensions of your puff pastry sheet since a cup of nuts will spread to different thicknesses on different sized pastry sheets.

Once rolled, move the little puff pastry carpet rolls to your baking dish. Repeat until the baking dish is full. Use any excess to fill in gaps if you have them. If not just bake them in a smaller dish - they will still taste great.

When all the rolls are in, use a knife to gently score them across so each is about 3cm / 1inch long as shown in the photo.

You don't need to cut all the way through, just a light score mark which will make it easier for you to cut them later on after they're baked and the syrup had been poured over.

If you have any excess ground pistachio that fell onto your work surface - feel free to sprinkle it onto the baklava. More ground pistachio will be applied later, but this tiny bit sprinkled on before baking is first of all a great way to not waste the nuts, and second of all it will add another layer of toasty nutty flavor on top.

3. Pouring on the rosewater syrup

At about the 35 minute mark the puff pastry will be golden and almost ready. At this point you should make the sugar syrup. You have to time it right so that both the sugar syrup and the baklava are very hot when the sugar syrup is poured on. This is so it absorbs well.

Heat the sugar and water until the sugar crystals dissolve and the liquid thickens to a syrup. Turn off the heat and add any flavorings you're using. Keep in mind that orange blossom water can be very strong and if you use too much, you may end up feeling like you're eating perfume.

When the baklava is ready, take it out of the oven and pour the sugar syrup over it right away.

The baklava then needs to sit and rest so it can set, otherwise it will be a bit jiggly. Don't forget to factor in the rest time and definitely don't skip the rest. It will be better after it sets I promise.

Serving Suggestion

Since the baklava has a soft and luscious texture, it's amazing served with ice cream. I highly recommend you try this pairing. The coolness of the ice cream balances the sweet stickiness of the baklava.

Ice cream really takes it to another level and makes it a dinner party worthy dessert.

More Pistachio!

If you love pistachio like I do you may also like these:

• Easy Pistachio Cream Puffs with Chocolate Glaze
• Crispy Pork Belly Porchetta with Pistachio, Parmesan & Fennel Seed
• Prosciutto Wrapped Pork Tenderloin with Pistachio & Red Pepper

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