Title: Baklava 1
Categories: Greek
Yield: 1 Servings

Ingredients:

Fillo dough (pastry leaves). 1 1/4 cups butter/margarine 1/4 cup sugar 1-2 tsp cinnamon (ground) 4 cups almonds, slivered and chopped. cloves (NOT ground)

For syrup:

4 cups sugar 3 cups water 1/2 cup honey 1 stick cinnamon 5-6 cloves (NOT ground) Mix sugar, cinnamon, sugar, and almonds.

Lay the fillo dough out on a table. Fillo dough will dry quickly, so you'll need to work fast, so what spills out of the pan doesn't dry (although it will anyway), and keep a damp towel on the rest of it (that you had laid on the table) so it doesn't dry.

On a medium-sized, buttered pan (you'll need to melt the butter) lay one of the sheets of dough. Butter it, and lay another on top of that. Continue until you have 5-6 sheets of dough on the bottom of the pan. Then lay another sheet, and do NOT butter it. On that, put some of the almond mix, enough to cover it evenly, but not making a thick layer. On that, lay another sheet of dough, butter it, and then another, unbuttered. On that place some almond mix again. Repeat until all the mix is gone, or you have only 4-5 sheets of dough left.

Fold in the dough that hangs from the side of the pan. Some of sthem will be dry, so just cut them and discard them. Make sure to butter all of them (except, of course, if they have almonds on them). Lay down some more sheets of dough, buttering every one, and cutting off the edges, that hang from the sides of the pan. here, I've found it easier if you just lay the dough down, width of dough to length of pan. That is to say, the width of the dough is sometimes about teh same size as the length of the pan, and the length of the dough about twice teh widht of the pan, so lay the short side of the dough down along the length of the pan, so that some (about half) of it will hang out the end. Then butter it, and fold what hangs back in the pan, buttering that. This way you get it to look better, and stick better.

When you're done with laying the sheets of dough down, make sure you butter the first one VERY well, and sprinkle some water on it before you put it in the oven. Also, with a sharp, pointy knife, cut the top few sheets of dough, not getting all the way through, just sort of "scratching" the top layer and marking the pieces, in rhombus-shaped pieces. I find it easier to cut along lengthwise, and then sideways, from corner to corner, and lines paralel to that: Converted by MMCONV vers. 1.40

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