Ingredients
1 kg hazelnuts, roasted, skin removed and cooled
600 gm dark chocolate (77 per cent cocoa)
100 gm butter
30 gm cinnamon powder
20 gm cocoa powder
750 gm filo pastry
1 kg white sugar
1.1 l water
Vanilla ice cream, to serve
Method
1. Put the hazelnuts in a food processor and blitz on maximum speed a few times to ensure they’re crushed (not grinded). Repeat the process with the chocolate and mix it with the crushed hazelnuts.
2. Ensure the butter is at room temperature, then mix it with cinnamon and cocoa powder, thus creating a mixture for the pastry brush.
3. Take a 53 x 32.5cm baking pan and brush it with butter. Start layering filo pastry sheets (2 sheets per layer), brush with cocoa butter, then spread the chocolate hazelnut mix over. Keep repeating this sequence about 10 to 11 times. Ensure that the last layer is not brushed with cocoa butter, only regular butter.
4. At this stage, thoroughly wash a coin and insert it into the baklava. Then cut the pastry into squares or triangles. Dimensions and shapes are entirely up to you. Bake at 140°C for 45 minutes.
5. While the baklava is baking, prepare the syrup by mixing the water and sugar and bringing it to a boil.
6. Once the baklava is out of the oven, pour the syrup all over it. Ensure a temperature difference, so that the pastry and syrup are of different temperatures (hot/cold) to avoid the pastry cracking and to ensure that syrup soaks in evenly.
7. Let it cool overnight, then serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
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