Ingredients

About 40 sheets of thin phyllo pastry (about 30cm x 30cm each), ¾ cup of sugar, 1 ¼ cup of water, 300gr of ghee (or clarrified unsalted butter), 300gr of thinly sliced (or coarsely ground) hazelnuts.

Preparation and Cooking

• Preparation phase of Sutlu Nuriye is the same as in the classical baklava given previously, hence will not be repeated here! However, the most distinctive feature of Sütlü Nuriye dessert that sets it apart from the other baklava is its hazelnut ingredients in the middle fillings and its milky syrup insteady of a sugar based syrup.
• To make milky syrup, mix water and sugar in a suitable saucepan and boil it for about 5 minutes. Then add the milk, mix and remove it from the heat. Note that adding milk to the syrup 5 minutes after boiling the sugar and water is an important step.

Hints and Comments

• History of this desert: During the September 12 Military Dictatorship in Turkiye in 1980, after a general complained to another general on duty in Istanbul about the high price of the baklava he had purchased, a list regarding the maximum sales price of baklava was published and reinforced two days before the Ramadan Feast that year. Hence one of the major baklava producers searched for a solution to make baklava at a cost that could be sold within the price ceiling; hazelnuts were used instead of pistachios, and milk was added to increase the weight of the dessert. In this way, a relatively low-cost baklava was born that could be sold at the price dictated by the authorities of the coup.
• This highly light version of baklava quickly became the preferred choice among the university students and the public and established a place among the rich culinary traditions of conventional baklava.
• Another distinct baklava type is also available, which is named as “Melon Baklava”. In this baklava the middle filling layer is made from mashed sweet melon. In another version of the same baklava type, no phyllo pastry is used after the melon layer.