Baklava is sheer heaven for someone with a massive sweet tooth. Sticky sweet yet crisp and heady with rose, it's a huge indulgence, especially served with black coffee.
Making baklava vegan also seemed entirely possible. I'm pretty sceptical about vegan cakes. Margarine is, from what I can see, pure poison. Eggs perform so many roles within baked goods that they are enormously tricky to replace. And there is something about the flavour and melting point of butter which is so hard to replicate.
Too often when I have a vegan cake...it tastes like disappointment and I feel I would rather have had some chocolate. Or a few dates. I love dates. Dates rule.
Baklava seemed free of the normal problems. The pastry is filo (or phyllo is you are playing scrabble). It is naturally free of butter and eggs, with just a little oil and perhaps a touch of vinegar joining the flour and water.
The filling too is quite simple. It's just nuts and spices, soused in enough sugar to rot an elephant's teeth in 15 seconds. So I went for it, knowing I only had to face two challenges.
First, the pastry sheets need to be brushed with fat to stop them sticking to one another. Normally, this is butter, presumably for flavour. Well, that was obviously out of the question.
I considered using coconut oil, as it is the closest natural equivalent to butter. Both are saturated fats and solid at room temperature. However, I did not want the oil to flavour my dessert, particularly not with coconut. Flavour considerations also ruled out olive oil. So I stuck with my trusty rape seed (vegetable) oil.
This was actually a good call. My pastry crisped up perfectly and the leaves did not stick to one another. Meanwhile, the oil maintained a neutral taste which did not affect my filling.
The other challenge was even easier to overcome. Some recipes call for a syrup made with honey. Since I was going for strictly vegan, this again was not an option. However, the recipes I've used over the years use a sugar syrup - problem solved!
This brings me to the below recipe. It is an adaptation of a Hairy Biker's recipe, from their excellent Perfect Pies cookbook. OK, that particular volume is not great for vegans but it is a useful source book for ideas!
Just as a final note, the simplicity of baklava means it is endlessly customisable. Choose whatever nuts you want, whatever spices you want and, of course, whatever essence you want. I love rose but next time will probably try out its great rival, orange blossom water.
I suppose you could even try out peppermint extract but I take no responsibility if your family disowns you for such an avant garde experiment.
For nuts, I chose walnuts as I love the slightly bitter flavour they give to counterpoint the sweetness of the syrup.
Ingredients:
- Filo pastry, enough for 14 squares at least 23cm x 23cm (9in x 9in) in size. I used one 270g pack of Jus-Rol, the book of sheets opened up and sliced down the middle to turn 7 rectangles into 14 squares
- About 100g rape seed oil, for brushing. You may need more or less but don't go crazy with it
- 350g walnuts
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 350g golden caster sugar
- Zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
- 100g water
- 3 tsp rose essence. Warning! Brands vary hugely in strength. Also, if you are using genuine rosewater, which is tricky to grab hold of in the West, you might want to up the dosage to 3 tbsp as it packs far less punch. For reference, I used Nielsen-Massey's rosewater, which is more of an essence and pretty powerful
- Preheat your oven to 200℃ (180℃ fan oven) or Gas Mark 6. Brush or rub some oil around a 9x9 inch brownie pan. It's important not to use a loose bottomed cake pan, as all your syrup will likely dribble out when you pour it on. And nobody wants that
- Put your nuts into a blender and chop coarsely. You want to destroy all the large pieces but avoid creating nut flour. The below picture should be about right as a guide
- Toss the nuts with the cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, lemon zest and 100g of your sugar. Set aside
- Brush one square of pastry with oil. I find a dabbing motion with the brush works best here. Trying to smear it on with painterly strokes just results in the pastry soaking up a vast quantity of oil, which is a one way road to nasty! Lay the pastry in the oiled tin. Repeat until you have a stack of four sheets in the tin. Add one last, unoiled sheet on top
- Spread a third of your nut mixture on top of this sheet
- Oil a sheet of filo, place it on top of the nut layer, and then top this with an unoiled piece of pastry
- Repeat - on goes another third of your nut mixture, then an oiled sheet (oil side up, of course, as the aim is to stop the pastry sticking to itself) and finally an unoiled sheet
- Sprinkle on the last of your nuts and add four more sheets of oiled pastry. Top with the final sheet and brush with as much oil was you feel appropriate!
- Push down any overhanging pastry and score the top few leaves into 16 squares. Bake for around 20 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden
- Meanwhile, make the syrup. Put the remaining 250g of sugar into a saucepan with the lemon juice and water. Heat until the sugar is dissolved and remove from the heat. Leave to cool until you can taste it safely. Then add the rosewater a teaspoon at a time until the strength is to your liking. I find 3 tsp tows the line between tasting punchy enough and lending the syrup a perfumed, sickly mood
- Once the baklava is baked, pull it out of the oven and cut fully into its 16 squares. Pour over the syrup and leave to stand for at least an hour while the baklava cools and absorbs the syrup
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