A couple years ago my husband and I ate a few times at a little hole in the wall Greek restaurant. One night we got Baklava for dessert. I thought it was absolutely scrumptious. Several times I thought about that sweet, delectable treat and that I should try making it, but all the recipes I found for it seemed very involved. If you haven't noticed by now, I like EASY cooking.
One day I was on one of my favorite sites, dLife, and came across this recipe for Mock Baklava. It looked tasty AND simple, so I decided to try it. Here's what you need:
1 cup seedless raisins (I couldn't find anything labeled "seedless", so I just got generic ole raisins)
2 oz dry-roasted walnuts
8 sheets phyllo dough, thawed
Butter flavored cooking spray...I just used my canola oil spray
1/2 C honey
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp melted I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, or something similar
Here are a few preliminary instructions:
I couldn't find anything called "dry roasted" walnuts. I got a small 2 oz package of walnut pieces in the baking aisle and toasted my own. I chopped them up into smaller pieces, spread them out on a baking sheet, heated the oven to 375F and toasted for about 10 minutes...be careful not to let them burn. Just get toast them until they have a nice golden color and you can start to smell them.
Second, put your phyllo dough out to thaw, but DO NOT open the package! It will dry out VERY quickly and will be ruined.
Here's what you do to make Mock Baklava:
1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Combine raisins and nuts in a bowl.
3. I covered my baking sheet with aluminum foil, and I've VERY glad I did. The honey seeps out during baking and will make a horrible sticky mess on your pan. I sprayed it lightly with canola oil spray.
4. Lay down a sheet of thawed phyllo dough. Spray it lightly with pan spray. Lay down a total of 8 phyllo sheets, spraying lightly every other sheet.
5. Spread the raisin and nuts on the top of the phyllo sheets, leaving a 1 inch border on all the sides.
6. Sprinkle with the cinnamon and drizzle on the honey evenly.
7. Starting with the long side, roll lengthwise, jelly-roll style. Place roll with the seam side down, and tuck the ends under.
8. Melt the butter in a dish and brush the top lightly with it. I don't have a kitchen brush, so I just drizzled it across.
9. Cut shallow slashes through the pastry to the raisin-nut mixture at 1 1/2" intervals so the steam can escape.
10. Bake for 25 minutes, or until light golden brown. Slice the pastry, using the vent lines as guides.
This was an amazing morsel of sweet, crunchy, chewy goodness! When I put the cinnamon on I thought it looked like an awful lot, but the cinnamon flavor comes through absolutely perfectly. The phyllo on the outside is crisp and flaky, and the inside is a little chewy and sticky from the honey and raisins. One thing made me very unhappy, though. It was gone too quickly. :( lol But it is so sweet that even one slice of it will surely cure your craving. Needless to say, my husband and kids loved it. Except Sami is sick and didn't try it, but she doesn't like raisins, so I don't know that she would like it. But Matthew and Sara did. I definitely did!
I don't know what it is with dLife and the ingredients they use. I never come up with the same nutritional counts as they do. Sure, I may have used a few more walnuts than they did, but their calories and carbs weren't even close to my calculations. Are they trying to be deceptive? Do they use secret low calorie raisins and honey? I have no idea. But here's what I came up with, and I am confident my numbers are accurate for the ingredients I used. The way I do it is I have a little chart that I made. I list every ingredient's nutritional values for the entire recipe, then I add up the totals and then divide by the number of servings. Pretty straight forward. Anyways, here's what I came up with per slice: 137 calories, 3.6g fat, 31mg sodium, 96mg potassium, 26g carb, .9g fiber, 1.9g protein. (4 Points Plus)
You really must try this recipe! It is so far beyond the typical cake or cookie. And it was EASY! I am making this again very soon.
Treat Yourself,
Lisa
PS Hover over the black bar on the right to pull out more menu options for my blog.
happyfairylove@live.com
One day I was on one of my favorite sites, dLife, and came across this recipe for Mock Baklava. It looked tasty AND simple, so I decided to try it. Here's what you need:
1 cup seedless raisins (I couldn't find anything labeled "seedless", so I just got generic ole raisins)
2 oz dry-roasted walnuts
8 sheets phyllo dough, thawed
Butter flavored cooking spray...I just used my canola oil spray
1/2 C honey
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp melted I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, or something similar
Here are a few preliminary instructions:
I couldn't find anything called "dry roasted" walnuts. I got a small 2 oz package of walnut pieces in the baking aisle and toasted my own. I chopped them up into smaller pieces, spread them out on a baking sheet, heated the oven to 375F and toasted for about 10 minutes...be careful not to let them burn. Just get toast them until they have a nice golden color and you can start to smell them.
Here's what you do to make Mock Baklava:
1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Combine raisins and nuts in a bowl.
4. Lay down a sheet of thawed phyllo dough. Spray it lightly with pan spray. Lay down a total of 8 phyllo sheets, spraying lightly every other sheet.
5. Spread the raisin and nuts on the top of the phyllo sheets, leaving a 1 inch border on all the sides.
6. Sprinkle with the cinnamon and drizzle on the honey evenly.
7. Starting with the long side, roll lengthwise, jelly-roll style. Place roll with the seam side down, and tuck the ends under.
8. Melt the butter in a dish and brush the top lightly with it. I don't have a kitchen brush, so I just drizzled it across.
9. Cut shallow slashes through the pastry to the raisin-nut mixture at 1 1/2" intervals so the steam can escape.
10. Bake for 25 minutes, or until light golden brown. Slice the pastry, using the vent lines as guides.
I don't know what it is with dLife and the ingredients they use. I never come up with the same nutritional counts as they do. Sure, I may have used a few more walnuts than they did, but their calories and carbs weren't even close to my calculations. Are they trying to be deceptive? Do they use secret low calorie raisins and honey? I have no idea. But here's what I came up with, and I am confident my numbers are accurate for the ingredients I used. The way I do it is I have a little chart that I made. I list every ingredient's nutritional values for the entire recipe, then I add up the totals and then divide by the number of servings. Pretty straight forward. Anyways, here's what I came up with per slice: 137 calories, 3.6g fat, 31mg sodium, 96mg potassium, 26g carb, .9g fiber, 1.9g protein. (4 Points Plus)
You really must try this recipe! It is so far beyond the typical cake or cookie. And it was EASY! I am making this again very soon.
Treat Yourself,
Lisa
PS Hover over the black bar on the right to pull out more menu options for my blog.
happyfairylove@live.com
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