i have broken away from the obsession with all things chocolate for one night and made a baklava birthday cake for aidan. the rose water takes me back to our little ground floor flat beside the river shannon where we started cocoa bean nearly 7 years ago. every friday night emily and i made turkish delight, soft and bright pink and dipped it into dark chocolate, crisp and shiny. if there was any left after the satuday market, we'd eat it on a sunday walk in curragh chase.
this is a realtime blog! the baklava are in the oven. they smell good but pastry is so different to chocolate... fingers crossed! if they fail, hopefully the baby will arrive during the night to share her dad's birthday and distract everyone's attention from birthday cakes, traditional or not.
recipe
place 225g sugar in a pot with 1/4 pint of water and bring to the boil. simmer for 10 minutes and then add a tablespoon of rose water. set the syrup aside to cool.
mix together 175g ground pistahio nuts with 75g icing sugar and 12 crushed cardamoms.
melt 75g unsalted butter and brush a rectangular tin with some of the butter.
preheat the oven to 160 c/ 325 f/ gas 3
lay six layers of filo in the tin, brushing each layer with melted butter. sprinkle half of the nut mixture over the filo. lay another six layers of filo in the tin and sprinkle the rest of the nut mixture, topping it with filo. Pour any remaining butter over the top and cut the pastry into small lozenge shapes with a sharp knife.
bake for 20 minutes and then increase the heat to 200 c/ 400 f/ gas 6 and bake for another 15 minutes until light golden in colour.
remove from the oven and pour 3/4 of the syrup over the pastry. keep the rest for serving
if you would rather not break with the chocolate obsession, even for one night, then a bar of cocoa bean rose and pistachio has some of the same ingredients...
it's now 11pm and i have just poured the syrup over the pastry. it has worked!!! you can break them up into lozenges and arrange artfully with rose petals and icing sugar but mine is staying as a cake. happy birthday aidan x
2 comments:
I'm impressed! The only time I tried this it came out in a soggy compressed sqwodge of dough... more like trying to eat a sweetened balaclava!
Hmmm ... sweet balaclava! Try this recipe - it must be fairly foolproof as I'm no expert when it comes to pastry. It tasted good too - we all ate it in bed before breakfast with coffee, balloons and presents. Still not had baby - a week late now!
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