Saturday, September 10, 2011

Try this at home, kids!

 Edit: If you've visited before, note that I changed the cooking times. Forgive brain cramp.

    This is how to make portable baklava. (Trail mix, more or less.)
    You will need two pans, one smaller and one larger (unless you have much greater dexterity than I have).
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. This doesn't take long, but you have to do it at some point, so you may as well do it now.
    Take a large mixing bowl. Add 4 tablespoons of honey (I use clover honey from Aldi) and 2 of olive oil (extra virgin, also from Aldi). This goes much quicker if you do it in this order: 1 T olive oil, 2 T honey, then repeat. Add one teaspoon of cinnamon or one, maybe two teaspoons of cocoa  and one of vanilla or, if you're daring, all of the above. Mix thoroughly. (See bottom of post for more about cocoa.)
Add a cup of puffed brown rice cereal (available from health food stores) or rice krispies (if you aren't celiac). Mix even more thoroughly.
    Add half a cup of chopped (raw) almonds and a quarter cup each of chopped (also raw) pecans and sunflower seed kernels (raw, too). (I get the almonds from Aldi and chop them in a food chopper. I get the pecans from Aldi, too and the sunflower seeds from Publix. Have to drive out to the suburbs, though. (Grumble grumble grumble)) Mix to whatever degree seems appropriate to you.
    Cover your smaller pan with aluminum foil. Spread the nut mixture out in pan. Stick in oven for 10 minutes. Cover your larger pan with aluminum foil, too. When time is up, put the aluminum foil and larger pan (preferably in that order) on top of the smaller pan. Using an oven mitt, flip the two pans. Get the smaller pan off carefully, then its aluminum foil. Scrape off as much as you can and add it to the bigger pan. You may then have to lick a lot of honey from the aluminum foil. I think you're up to it.
    Give the larger pan another 10 minutes. Afterwards, let cool for 5-10 minutes. Then put in a reclosable bag. (You may have to lick more honey off more aluminum foil. Dang it to heck.) Let cool in refrigerator for at least a half hour, preferably an hour. Then all you have to do is try not to eat it all at once. And fight off marauders.

Last edit: If you've visited this page before, you may have seen a lot more edits here. I was struggling with the cocoa version and finally figured out I was putting in too much cocoa. In the test kitchen, I have just tried out using a teaspoon of cocoa (that's unsweetened cocoa if you couldn't guess from all the honey also going in) and it turned out a little light on chocolate flavor, but very pleasant. I'm pretty sure you could get away with two teaspoons, but I'm absolutely sure that a full tablespoon is too much. Winds up tasting like coffee and not entirely in a good way.

Edit after the last edit: I invented Krispy Kremes! Turns out that adding a teaspoon of vanilla to the two of cocoa solves all problems. Crazy mad delicious, and not in any way reminiscent of coffee. Next edit after the last edit: why not coconut?

No comments:

Post a Comment