How to Make a Baklava, From the Betty Crocker International Cookbook

Baklava is really assembly required. Filo pastry is the key ingredient. You also need walnuts, almonds, and pecans. First, you prepare the honey syrup with mixing the nuts, although I forgot the spices. I didn’t even brush the pan with margarine. Oops. Big mistakes I will not make the second time around. One package filo pastry—and as you unfold the filo leaves, you put a damp towel to prevent drying, which I also didn’t do. I put stevia in the honey syrup. I used one cup of stevia. You put one and a half cups of water and two tablespoons lemon juice. I find that using the lemon can be a pain, but getting lemonade is better for things like lemon sauce.

Baklava calls for three cups finely chopped, or in my case, I used the blender, of chopped walnuts, almonds, and pecans, or a combination of other nuts. You need two teaspoons ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves. You brush the edges of the filo with margarine, layering seven or more filo leaves in the pan. You heat the oven to 350˚, and I didn’t necessarily cut up the pastry into strips half inch deep and one and three quarter inches wide. I didn’t know how to make diagonal cuts across with strips half inch deep and two inches wide. You pour remaining butter on the top.

You bake until golden, which in my powerful oven took less time than one might imagine. In the end, you place the pan on the wire rack and pour syrup over the top. Mine tasted really good despite the mistakes I made. I want to try again soon because stevia made a difference in my glucose after having the baklava. You heat the combination of water, sugar, and lemon juice to a boil. You boil it for five minutes, remove from heat, stir in honey, and then cool it off.

I made some mistakes with the baklava because I was in a hurry. I will not be making the same mistakes again. In particular because I need more nutmeg since I have cloves, I have cinnamon. I suppose I got a touch paranoid when I made the baklava last. I will try it again with the spices this time. It turned out great. It tasted like something I’d find made by somebody else in a restaurant or pastry shop. I have no idea where to get baklava out here, anyway. Baklava is one of my favorites as it gets a wild blood sugar up really quickly. But I know how to make it sugar-free as stevia is a natural sugar substitute that is less deadly than xylitol, aspartame, Splenda, or Equal. Stevia is great because it has no calories. Stevia comes from Paraguay and Brazil because people there have used stevia for hundreds of years.

Stevia was used for the treatment of burns, colic, stomach problems, and even as a contraceptive. Stevia was previously known as a wild herb. The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers high purity steviol glycosides, an extract of the stevia plant which is considered safe to use for food. In 2000, Americans started using alternative sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners are not as bad to use because they generally make sugar easier to process. The product I use for my baking is called Truvia, a mix of cane sugar as well as stevia. I use it in everything requiring sugar. It is a wonderful sugar substitute. Twenty four percent of adults in the present use sugar substitute. Stevia might have drug interactions with other medications, so it is best to talk to your doctor about using it in large amounts. I use it in my baking because it makes a product sugar-free and all you have to worry about is the carbohydrate. Sugar-free products are not all made the same, you still have to take insulin for the carbohydrate. I made a great baklava, it would be nice to try it again.