Lebanese Baklawa Recipe. Do you hear what I hear? - Maureen Abood (2024)

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My Lebanese baklawa recipe gives you step-by-step instructions so you can enjoy baking and eating this beautiful classic pastry. Lebanese baklawa is buttery, crisp layers of phyllo filled with nuts and drenched in flower water syrup. Once you get the hang of the many parts involved, it’s a wonderful and not-difficult addition to your baking repertoire! Read my full guide here.By the way, you don’t have to butter every layer! Watch my video with a very simple methodhere.

The role baklawa plays in the repertoire of the Lebanese home cook is formidable. Most every Lebanese woman of my parents’ generation makes her baklawa for special occasions, especially Christmas. We swoon over baklawa to such a degree that it’s like our little pet, our little coosa. We call it our baklawi (bit-LAY-wee), just like you might call me Maureenie, or my sister Pegsie, or your mother Mommy.

The pastry must have become so endearing not only because of its crisp, buttery layers that incite near-delirium when eaten warm from the oven, but also because of the labor required to make baklawi. There are several steps involved—clarifying butter, making and cooling orange blossom simple syrup, chopping and sugaring nuts—and these no doubt would pale in comparison to the work that once was the burden of Middle Eastern women the world over: the making of the phyllo. Seems they had to stretch the dough as thinly as possible by pulling it across the kitchen table in one huge sheet. I imagine these l­­­ittle ladies danced a jig in their house dresses on that same tabletop when they discovered commercially-made phyllo. It’s a wonder that certain tasks like stretching phyllo didn’t just fall by the wayside, but they did it as though there was no option, and their success in their labor no doubt pushed them full steam ahead.

Aunt Hilda made huge platters of baklawa all wrapped up like the present that they were, each piece encased in its own pleated foil cup and the whole thing wrapped up with pink Saran and topped with a bow. This baklawi-gift was personally delivered to the homes of Hilda’s brothers every Christmas. It didn’t matter to her, or to us, that we had our own huge tray of baklawa that my mother made (“your mom browns hers much more than I do, and there’s nothing wrong with that…”). The more baklawa, the better.

Hilda labored over the baklawi in her kitchen, over the phone, out for lunch or dinner or anywhere good conversation was had. She felt hers was truly the best. Her pastry looked like the traditional diamond-shaped pieces but it was actually made with long logs of phyllo and nuts that had been rolled up and placed snugly next to one another on the tray, and then cut into diamonds. She learned this method from Aunt Louise, and now many of the cousins, having learned from Aunt Hilda, make theirs this way too. The pieces hold together nicely.

Aunt Rita has baked enough baklawi to earn her a place in the baklawa hall of fame. No doubt she too feels hers is truly the best. For years, her kitchen would turn into a bakery at Christmastime as she made tray after tray, some 50 of them every December. The effort required 20 pounds of clarified butter and 50 pounds of phyllo from wholesalers. Whenever she saw butter or sugar on sale, she bought it. She sold the trays for $25 each. Today, she says, she wouldn’t do it for less than $50. But carpel tunnel has gotten to her hands and it just doesn’t work anymore. How did this happen, she says with a sigh.

You can imagine that anyone who makes that much baklawa comes up with some tricks of the trade. The practice of buttering each layer of phyllo can be Zen-like and all peaceful and everything if you are making one. But get up to 50 trays, and mind is going to prevail over matter. Rita’s mind went to what might happen if she didn’t butter each layer, if in fact she just laid the 20 leaves of phyllo right into the pan, scattered the nuts over that, laid 20 more leaves on top—then cut it into diamonds and poured all of the butter over the whole kit’n kaboodle, letting it seep down through all of the layers and nuts. What happened was this: the baklawa was just as delicious as if she had buttered every layer.

My mom took up this practice, which means I took up this practice too. I’ve taken to bragging about how you don’t have to butter every layer and even taught my classmates at Tante Marie’s Cooking School how to do it. They were shocked; I took a bow.

Then I went to make the baklawa for you the other day. I whipped it out fast. Mom helped and we were pleased with ourselves for making a beautiful baklawi for the blog. Then we tasted it. Wet. Soggy. And so floral with orange blossom water that one bite was about all any of us could take. But I KNOW this method works!, I said. It does, she said. We just made six trays this way for Aunt Hilda’s funeral luncheon not six months ago which were, we thought, worthy of the occasion. So we made the baklawi again and used less of everything—clarified butter, nuts, syrup, and especially mazaher. I called Aunt Rita to chat it up about her baklawa. She talked about how much she misses Aunt Hilda, as well as her mamoul cookies, and that you don’t have to panic if it looks like you have too much liquid. Just stay calm, and pour it off.

All of this fuss over the baklawi is worth it; you will understand this if and when you make or have some of the good stuff. Commercially-made baklawa tastes as though it’s made not with butter, but with oil, and it simply can’t compare. Just like olive oil cake has to be made with high-quality extra virgin olive oil, baklawa needs to be made with butter. The homemade pleasure starts when the pan has been in the oven for about 15 minutes, and the intoxicating scent of butter and pastry begins to swirl about the kitchen and throughout the house. There is Gloria in Excelsis Deo when the cool orange blossom syrup is poured over the hot pastry, giving you the most satisfying sizzling sound effect. Once the baklawa is cool enough to handle, cut off one of the ends that aren’t pretty and eat it. It might be too hot still and you’ll burn your mouth, like I did yesterday. But that won’t phase you. You’ll keep eating the crispy, toasty morsel with your eyes closed.

The baklawi isn’t so different from all our little coosas: you’ll produce something special with a little TLC, a lot of parent-pride, and the faith that your baklawi will go out into the world bringing goodness and light.

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