Pistachio Baklava and Pie Taste Test

So my family thinks the pie turned out great, but I couldn't even taste any cheese flavor in the crust, which to my palate, tasted dry, hard, and flavorless. The apple filling was a good, standard apple pie filling, but I won't be keeping the recipe. I only keep the recipe if I ever plan on making it again. I have other cheddar apple pie recipes I can try. Hopefully one of them will work.

The next recipe I made this morning was Chocolate Pistachio Baklava. This was a fun one to make, but it took a lot of work too. I started early this morning shelling a bag of pistachios and listening to A Very Potter Musical at my desk, always fun. When that was done, I took one of the packets of phyllo dough out of the freezer to thaw, assuming I'd use the entire thing. I was wrong. I only needed 4 sheets of dough. So I now will be eating something with phyllo dough in it this week.

My sister was up by the time I got started, and it's a good thing too, because this definitely took two sets of hands to prepare. I didn't have a second brush for the honey sauce I had to put on each layer after the butter, but I improvised and used a pie server as a trowel, which worked perfectly.

I didn't have the parchment paper for the baking sheets like they said to use, so I just greased the pans instead. I think I need to invest the money and get some parchment paper, because it would have saved a lot of time cleaning up afterwards. Everything melted out of the baklava and onto the pans, but it was pliable enough that I could just cut around it and lift them out of the pan. I spread some melted chocolate over each piece and stacked them up three high. Then we listened to some more A Very Potter Musical while the baklava baked in the oven and rain poured outside.

I had made a simple syrup mixture to pour over the baklava, but I forgot to put it on. It turns out it really didn't need it. I tested another piece with it later and it just felt like cold, wet liquid dripping off the baklava. The chocolate hardens and keeps it from absorbing into it, so I wouldn't make the simple syrup again. But I would make the baklava again. It was soooo delicious! And it looked really fancy on the serving plate. This is definitely a keeper recipe.

I am also slowly being converted over to unsalted butter. I used it for the baklava and it was really wonderful. Because I had to use salted pistachios, I think salted butter would have been too much. I'm glad I bought unsalted.