Recipe: Baklava

The Mitch comes out of retirement with this most ambitious flavour! Bam!

[Credit where credit is due - it's based on this fantastic recipe, with a little bit of Mitchification.]

For the ice cream

2 cups milk

1 cup cream

4 egg yolks

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup honey

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp lemon juice

For the extra trappings

1 cup walnuts

1 cup pistachio kernels, unsalted

5 sheets filo pastry

60g of unsalted butter

3 Tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1. Heat up milk, cinnamon and honey in a saucepan. Meanwhile, mix the egg yolks and white sugar together in a bowl. Once the milk is hot (not boiling), pour it slowly onto the yolks and stir it in. Pop in the lemon juice, then return to a low heat and stir constantly until it thickens up in to a custard. Set aside to cool.
2. Crush or chop the walnuts and pistachios until they are quite fine (think about the texture of nuts in actual baklava). Melt the butter and stir in the brown sugar and extra tsp of cinnamon to make a caramelly paste. Stir about half of it through the nuts and bake them at 180 degrees for as long as it takes to listen to Iron Maiden's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (about 13:27), or until toasted.
3. Brush each filo sheet with some more of the caramelly goodness and stack them on top of each other. Fold the whole lot in half and then chop into little pieces about 2cm square. Cook in the 180 degrees oven for 10-15 minutes or until light brown and crispy.
4. Once your ice cream mix, nuts and pastry are all cool, mix the cream into your honey custard. Put it in the ice cream machine. Once it's about half-frozen, start adding the chopped nuts. Once it's about 3/4 frozen, pop in the pastry bits. Done!

The Verdict: This is incredibly good. Like actual Baklava, it's ridiculously sweet, so maybe steer clear if you're worried about cavities or diabetes. The large amount of nuts give it a very firm, crunchy texture, and the syrup-soaked pastry make this a highly authentic deconstruction of this celebrated middle-eastern dessert. A possible extension would be to work in some rose-water or orange-blossom essence, but either way you'll be a happy little ice cream fan.