Baklava Rolls for Daring Baker's Challenge June 2011

Ha! Back to Daring Baker's Challenge after 2 months.  I missed last two wonderful challenges, but somehow with lots of challenges I made it up this month.  As always I did a last minute job this time also.  This month Erica of Erica's Edibles challenged us to make Baklava's with our own phyllo pastry.  Wow! Now that's quite challenging isn't, yes I really felt the heat this time, baking at nearly 38 degree Celsius.

   If I get a plate of baklava, I can never stop eating that, love it to that extend.  Although I have made baklava couple of times with shop bought phyllo pastry , this is the first time my hands on making the home made phyllo.  I have also previously posted one baklava recipe here,  which is an authentic one without any changes from the traditional.  So this time, I went with baklava rolls with some twist in it i.e Indianized twist.  Baklavas are traditionally filled with an assortment of nuts and soaked in honey and cinnamon syrup.  In this Indianized baklavas I used unsweetened khova or khoya and cashewnut as filling with saffron and cardamom syrup.

 Which was simply amazing, ahem! You can try it and give the verdict off course.  Thank you again Erica for this wonderful challenge, let's sink straight into the recipe now.
I'm not going to mention any preparation time details for this recipe, since it took quite a long time in rolling, was tired of calculating the time.

Ingredients:
For phyllo:
Plain flour- 250 g
Water- 150 ml
Oil- 45 ml
Salt-1/2 tsp

For cashew filling:
Cashew nuts- 100 g
Cardamom- 1
Sugar- 1 tbsp
Butter- 1 tbsp

For khoya filling:
Khoya- 100 g
Sugar- 1/2 tbsp

Note:
Khoya is made using milk in a large pan.  If you can't find khoya use ricotta cheese or paneer.

For syrup:
Honey- 3/4 cup
Sugar- 3/4 cup
Water- 3/4 cup
Cardamom- 2
Saffron- a pinch
Lemon juice- 1 tsp

Butter- 150 g( for brushing)

Method:
Note:
I do have the step by step pictures which I'll post it later this week.

Prepare the phyllo dough:
Add the flour, salt and oil in a mixing bowl, slowly add the water.  Using a dough tool or hand knead it into smooth elastic dough.  Once the dough comes together smoothly, knead it again for 10 to 15 minutes.  Cover the bowl  with a cling film and let it rest for minimum of 2 hours.

Prepare the filling:
Cashew filling:
Dry roast the cashew nuts in a pan until it gets heated.  Add the cashew nut, cardamom, sugar and butter to a food processor and pulse it until it looks like a coarse powder. Set it aside.

Khoya filling:
Mix the khoya and sugar together like a dough.

Roll the phyllo:
Divide the dough into 12 to 14 equal size balls.  Cover your work surface with plenty of flour, roll each ball into as thin as possible, until it looks quite transparent.  Roll out the remaining dough in the same way.

Form the rolls:
Take a sheet of phyllo pastry, brush it with melted butter and place another sheet on top it.  Make the khoya filling like a log and place it inside the pastry.  Roll out the pastry into a log.  Do the same with the cashew filling.  Place the rolls in a baking tray, brush it with melted butter on top.  Cut the log into 1 inch slices.
Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celsius and bake it for 40 to 45 minutes, until the top looks golden brown in colour.
Pour the warm syrup on top of the rolls and let it soak for 5 to 6 hours.  Since the filling is quite sweet, a little syrup would be sufficient.  You don't have to drench these rolls with syrup like regular baklava's.

To make the syrup:
Add all the syrup ingredients in a pan and bring it to boil and simmer for 10 minutes.