Chocolate Baklava (Choklava)
My Big Fat Greek dessert
I don’t know if you’ve seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, but there is a very important scene early in the second act. The main character’s dad is sulking for some reason, and his wife offers him chocolate baklava to cheer him up. I have no idea what happened after that, all I could think about was how delicious that sounded.
It turns out I was right to think that. This recipe was delicious. Were my hands sticky for 2-3 business days after making these? Yes. Was it worth it? Also yes. Meijer was out of filo pastry when I went, so I used puff pastry dough. It was still very good but it was less structurally sound than your average baklava so I would not recommend that substitution.
Ingredients:
5 oz of filo pastry sheets
8.5 oz of mixed nuts
3.5 oz of chocolate chips (recipe calls for dark chocolate, I used milk chocolate)
4.5 oz of butter
8.75 oz of sugar
.5 cups of water
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp of lemon juice
1 tbsp of orange juice or orange zest
1 tbsp of honey
Seasoning: cinnamon, cloves, salt
Directions:
Melt your butter in a small saucepan.
While that is melting, blend or chop your chocolate and nuts until they are as close to powder as possible. Put the mixture into a bowl and stir in your spices. The recipe calls for half a teaspoon per spice but measure with your heart.
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.
Brush an 8x8 baking dish with some of the melted butter. lay one sheet of filo pastry on the bottom of the baking dish so that it completely covers the bottom of the dish and brush the sheet with butter.
Evenly spread half of your baklava filling over the entire sheet of filo pastry. Lay another sheet of filo pastry on top of the baklava filling and brush the sheet with butter.
Use the other half of your filling to cover the top sheet of filo pastry. Lay the top layer of filo pastry on top of your filling. Cover with the remaining butter so the top gets as crispy as possible.
The recipe tells you to cut your baklava into this very specific pattern but honestly you can just cut them into squares. If you want the specific pattern the recipe is at the bottom of the page.
Bake for 1.5 hours or until the top starts to turn golden brown.
While that is baking, boil your water, sugar, orange juice, and cinnamon stick on high heat until the sugar dissolves. You’ll know the sugar is dissolved when you can no longer see the individual crystals in the water.
Remove from heat, and let the syrup sit until it reaches room temperature. Remove the cinnamon stick and stir in the lemon juice and honey.
Once the baklava is done baking, pour the sauce over the whole top layer and make sure it gets into the cuts you made earlier.
Cover and let the baklava cool to room temperature. Enjoy!
Annoyance Rating (1-10): 3
Assuming you did not try to cut it into the shape in the recipe, the hardest part is probably getting the syrup right. The hardest part for me was figuring out how to take a picture of a bunch of tiny messy pastries.
Erica’s Review:
“This smelled so good as Jake was making it, and the taste did not disappoint. I don’t know if I’ve ever had baklava before but now I know I love chocolate baklava and now I know my husband knows how to make it. Lucky me!”
Recipe I ripped off:
https://www.mygreekdish.com/recipe/chocolate-baklava-recipe/