Filo

Christmas being a family affair I am heading to my parents' place for Christmas. That means Mum has sorted out all the Christmas dinner, but I do like to contribute in some small way to the Christmas eats.
Last year I made a Christmas cake, but Mum was making one when I was there the other week, so that didn't seem a good idea for this year. Instead I decided to make some sweet nibbles, and I chose baklava: The reasoning was that I love it, I know my younger sister and my Mum both like Baklava, not sure about my Dad, but fingers crossed!

So today saw me melting a truly extraordinary amount of butter, trying to unwrap and divide up the delicate sheets of pastry, and generally having my first filo experience. All before coffee. Co-ordination wasn't too good!

I made a recipe from the BBC website (I really do use that a lot!) by James Martin, for Walnut and pistachio baklava. It had ginger in the syrup which appealled, plus I already had all the ingredients in the cupboard - a major advantage when the snow is as annoying as it is right now. I did forget to score the top of the pastry before it went in the oven, which was none too clever, but other than that I seem to have ended up with something which does resemble baklava.



The taste was more citrus-y than baklava I have bought in the past, and its less sweet too (although I did reduce the sugar quantities so that may not be due to the recipe!). It has a definite tendency towards falling apart, but then baklava always does, and it is deliciously crunchy.

NB: I didn't need anything like the amount of butter directed in the recipe - I only used about 2/3 or 3/4 of the amount, and I was being pretty generous with it.

As I was left with about 100g of filo pastry from the roll I'd bought I then had to find something else to make with it, and once again James Martin and the BBC came up trumps with a Banana, apricot and cinnamon filo parcel. It sounded like it would make a fab pudding for tonight. After my overly buttery baklava experience I adjusted the quantities slightly. Also, I generally like things slightly less sweet than in recipes, so I also cut down the amount of sugar and honey a bit. It all cooked up just fine though.



The best accompaniment would have been vanilla icecream, served on the parcels warm from the oven, but in the absence of any of that in the freezer I served it up with cream instead. A yummy, wintery, pudding. I do love cinnamon.

This post makes me realise how rarely I do sweet recipes. I really should do so more often.