Fruitcake Baklava

I joined Daring Bakers. If you haven’t heard of Daring Bakers, it’s an online baking club where the members bake a new recipe each month. This month is baklava. I made mine with candied fruit and toasted nuts, similar to a fruitcake — and I learned you have to be a bit of a fruitcake to make baklava from scratch.

The Story

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make baklava.

This is my third attempt at working with phyllo dough. The first time, I made spanakopita. Tyler Florence made it look easy on Food Network. I quickly learned it is not easy, and you can’t fast-forward through the slow, tedious process of layering the dough. It took hours to make, and only seconds to eat. I decided it was not worth the effort, and I never made spanakopita again.

A couple of years later, I made baklava. It was an assignment in a cooking class I took with my mother-in-law. Fortunately, we were able to use store-bought dough. However, I still thought it was way too much work.

Now with this Daring Bakers challenge, I made baklava again — and phyllo dough from scratch. To make matters more challenging, I procrastinated until the last minute to make it. Without much time to spare before my baklava post was due and given my previous experience with phyllo dough, Ken suggested I join “Lazy Bakers” instead. 🙁

When I told my mother-in-law about the challenge, she said it shouldn’t be too hard since we made baklava before. When I further explained the phyllo dough had to be homemade, she said something like, “That’s just crazy.”

Maybe she and Ken are right, and I should form a new club: “Crazy and Lazy Bakers.”

Given how my baklava turned out for the challenge, it might not be a bad idea. The humidity was 90 percent the day I made it, turning my baklava into bakla-blah!

After my baklava disaster, Ken said I should have done a practice run first.

Silly Ken. Practice runs are for wimpy bakers, not for daring bakers — or for bakers who are crazy and lazy. 🙂

The Moral of the Story

In all honesty,  Ken was probably right. I think the moral of the story is “don’t procrastinate.” Allow enough time to practice first when trying something new.

Or maybe my mother-in-law was right, and the moral of the story is “always use store-bought phyllo dough.”

The Cast of Characters

One good thing about this baklava is the filling. It is packed with toasted nuts, coconut and candied fruit — just like fruitcake.

About the Recipe

For the dough and syrup, I used the recipes provided by Daring Bakers for the challenge. For the filling, I improvised using a combination of nuts and fruit inspired by my desire to make fruitcake.

The Play-by-Play

Disclaimer: You may not want to make this exactly the same way I did. You can see where it all starts to go wrong after rolling the phyllo dough.

I started by making the dough. In my stand mixer, I combined the flour and salt.

In another bowl, I mixed the water, oil and vinegar.

I added the wet ingredients to the dry, and mixed until a dough formed.

Then I used my dough hook to knead the dough for 10 minutes.

I kneaded the dough by hand for two more minutes.

I shaped the dough into a nice little ball.

Next, I wrapped it in saran wrap and let it rest for two hours.

Meanwhile, I made the fruitcake filling. I started by trying to grind a cinnamon stick in my food processor. I discovered a coffee grinder works better.

In my food processor, I placed the ground cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg, sugar, walnuts, pecans and coconut.

I ran the food processor until all was finely ground.

Then I added candied cherries, pineapples, citron and orange peel.

I ran the food processor again until the fruit was coarsely chopped.

Then I started rolling the dough using the pasta roller attachment for my stand mixer.

It was a lot like making pasta.

Here’s what it looked like after a pass through the first setting.

After a pass on the second setting, it looked like this.

It started getting longer after the third pass.

After the fourth pass, it was almost longer than the cutting board.

At the fifth pass, it was super long.

By the sixth pass, it was so thin it was nearly transparent.

With the seventh pass, it was even thinner.

At the eighth and final pass, it was like paper.

As I rolled the dough, I cut the sheets to fit my loaf pan.

Here’s where it started to go wrong. I floured each sheet and stacked them between pieces of wax paper. Then I set them aside while I buttered my baking dish.

I placed the first dough sheet in the pan.

I buttered and layered a few more sheets and sprinkled 1/3 cup of filling on top.

Using a buttered spoon, I smoothed the filling in place.

As I reached for the next layer of phyllo, I realized something was horribly wrong. The humidity caught up with me, and the phyllo stuck to the wax paper like glue. As a result, the next layer looked like this.

I patched together as much dough as I could to make the remaining layers, and I salvaged a single piece of dough for the top.

I hastily cut the baklava into pieces and popped it in the oven for an hour.

By then it was getting late and I was tired. After it finished baking, I left it out to cool while we went out to dinner. By the time I got home to make the syrup, it was dark. That is why my syrup photo looks like this.

I poured the syrup over the baklava. This is what it looked like when I went to bed.

The next morning, it did not look much better.

I scooped out what I could.

Then I garnished it with a little coconut and extra candied fruit.

It actually didn’t taste too bad. It was just super sweet with all the honey.

What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever baked?