It's All Greek To Me...

I'm attending a International Celebration this weekend and I signed up to bring an international dish to share. Well, at first I thought, "Crepes: easy and delicious," but the simplicity of crepes did not satisfy my ambition to cook a masterpiece. So my next thought was, "German Chocolate Brownies!" Sounds dangerously delicious enough right? Not for me. No, I needed to stretch beyond my comfort zone into the world of the unknown ingredients and unfathomable preparatory procedures, I needed to make...BAKLAVA!

And thus, Heather and I embarked on this time-consuming and labor-intensive dish.

Here we see Heather sparsely painting each layer of phyllo with butter.

After 7 layers of butter-phyllo-butter-phyllo-butter-phyllo (you get the picture) we added a layer of our cinnamon walnut mixture. Yum! And thus the process continued till we used up every sheet of phyllo. Oh how the heart hurts and the mouth waters at the thought!

And here is the lovely, diagonally cut Baklava - ready to bake!

I was so giddy when I took this out of the oven. You could hear the flaky layers crackling with joy as they cooled. You simply cannot beat the smell of a freshly-baked, honey-smothered pastry wafting through the house.

And, only because I'm slightly obsessed with the Food Network as of late, I fancied it up a bit. Look how gorgeous it is! I give myself 10 points for presentation!

But oh, it tastes like heaven...

...of course, there are no calories in heaven.

I'd like to thank Feathy Lou, my "sous chef", for helping me super much AND my friend, Emeril Laggasse, for this wonderful recipe! Try it out and let me know what you think. Here's a tip, try substituting nutmeg for the cardamom and be as sparse as you can on the butter to avoid the guilt that inevitably comes with tasting your masterpiece!

If you don't feel like being ambitious, just head on over to my place.

Honestly, we've got a whole pan of Baklava in a house of dieting people! :)

Happy Baklavaing!