Baklava Dissection

I made baklava last night; here's the rundown.

It tastes ok. Sarah gives it "a thousand thumbs up!" I'm a little more discriminating, heh. It's definitely a thousand times better than last year's. Still, the bottom is a little soggy, a little over-saturated in the syrup. I've eaten a little to much of it to really be objective, though : my taste buds are on overload. There's enough to take a plate to my Dad & Sharon's tonight, and another plate to Jeff's parents' tomorrow night. We'll see how it's received there. No torte this year.

I still think there's too much sugar in the filling. Next time I make it, I'll do five cups of mixed nuts (instead of just the almonds--and no toasting, because then the almonds at the edges would burn for sure) instead of four cups, and a scant cup of sugar instead of two cups (the recipes I'm looking at online don't have any sugar in the filling, hmmm). Also, I only used three sticks of butter instead of four, which seemed to work fine. I didn't have cardamom on hand, so I used cinnamon, nutmeg & a little ginger. Worked ok.

The hardest part was remembering how many layers of dough I'd put down. It's really hard to concentrate on that when the kids are running around and constantly talking. I ended up putting them to work keeping track of the layers. I still have a few sheets of phyllo left, though.

Next time I make it, I'll be more willing to tweak the recipe, having done it once on my own now.