I love baklava, but with all this talk of buttering and layering—I never thought it was worth making at home. This holiday season, I accepted the baklava challenge and made three types: Turkish Pistachio Baklava, Armenian Walnut Pakhlava with Pomegranate Syrup, and a Broken Phyllo Baklava Cake. Along with some fine flaky treats, I ate my words. Baklava looks fussy and intense, like an activity suited only for practiced hands, but if you have your work station ready and your mise en place in place, baklava is absolutely worth making.

Streamlining your method

Don’t be intimidated by the layering steps—they’re mostly repetitive—but you should get organized. The biggest downfall for home cooks when making baklava is stopping mid-layer to grab more ingredients or melt more butter, which can lead to the phyllo drying out.

Have your pan ready and the oven preheating. Get the nuts chopped and in bowls. Melt the butter and have a pastry brush at the ready. Make sure your phyllo dough layers are thawed and that you have a sheet of plastic wrap or two ready to cover the dough so it doesn’t dry out. It’s just a streamlined layering process from there. Turn on a show or call your mom to chat. No special skill or talent is needed.

Turkish Pistachio Baklava

This pistachio baklava, with its radiating lines and chartreuse hue, is a tempting sight that makes a great centerpiece on your dessert table. We chop the nuts to three different degrees: coarsely chopped, finely chopped, and chopped into a super-fine dust. Lemon-scented syrup is drizzled over the top and into the cut pattern to imbue each slice with its bright, fruity flavor.

While the layering takes patience, once it’s in the 450°F oven it bakes up in a jiffy. Before you start, you have to cut the sheets into a circle, using the cake pan as a guide. Don’t throw away the scraps. Keep them wrapped tightly and use the off-cuts to make the third recipe on this list. When you get to layering, we recommend thinking of the phyllo layers in groups. Using plastic wrap to help separate the groups (as the recipe indicates) will take the pressure off of you having to count and remember what layer you’re on.

Scoring the baklava before baking is the biggest test of patience, but it’s absolutely necessary. (You must cut it so the pieces are easy to separate and serve later.). I recommend using an old cake pan, or one that you don’t mind scratching up a bit. You have to cut through the layers completely and scratching is hard to avoid. Put the cake in the oven and keep one eye on it while you make the lemon-scented syrup, it browns quickly.

Walnut Pakhlava with Pomegranate Syrup

Our Armenian pakhlava shares a lot with the Turkish baklava above—phyllo layers, nuts, and syrup—but a few differences set it apart. We use clarified butter (with the water and milk solids separated out) instead of whole melted butter. Earthy, delicate walnuts are the star instead of almonds or pistachios, and we spike our syrup with pomegranate molasses for a festive hue and tangy accent.

While this pakhlava requires layering and basting with butter, the process feels somehow less fussy, since you can use the entire rectangular sheet of phyllo without trimming it. As I went along buttering and layering, I quickly realized that aside from the very top layer of phyllo, it’s okay if the inner pieces aren’t perfectly flat. A wrinkled edge here and there isn’t anything you need to fix. The point is to get as much coverage as possible and move on.

This pakhlava recipe offers an exciting change in flavor, especially if you find traditional baklava to be too cloying. While still soaked in syrup, the pomegranate molasses provides an acidic pop that perks up your tastebuds.

Broken Phyllo Baklava Cake

Rippling with golden layers of phyllo and crushed pistachio running throughout, you get all of the richness and texture of true baklava, but as a full cake slice. Two things surprised me about this cake: its spongy, airy texture and complex its flavor.

This cake is made without any flour. Instead, as the name indicates, the main bulking ingredient is broken shards of oven-dried phyllo, which get mixed into an egg-heavy batter made with oil, sugar and lemon zest. Essentially, that’s the whole cake—crushed, toasted phyllo and a thin batter. The phyllo provides a surprising amount of structure, and a healthy dose of baking powder (one full tablespoon), the egg, and the natural wafering of the phyllo provides plenty of aeration. The cake came out of the oven with height and bounce.

The batter itself is flavored with a small measure of lemon zest; the most interesting flavor elements are actually from the soaking syrup added post-bake. The syrup is a simple sugar and water situation, but strips of lemon zest, whole black peppercorns and crushed cardamom pods steep in the mixture as it heats up. Rose water is optional for a bit of traditional baklava flavor, but I didn’t add it, as the floral-citrus aromas were already abundant—strong enough to make a statement without overpowering the cake.

The syrup adds flavor, moisture, and a beautiful shine to the cake. Slice into it, and you can see the full display of rippling phyllo layers. It’s a surprisingly simple celebration cake to make when you’re looking for that warm, syrupy baklava flavor and crispy-edged texture, without any of the layering.

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Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Allie Chantorn Reinmann is a Digital Staff Writer for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. She’s a Thai-American chef who earned her diploma for Pastry and Baking Arts at The Institute of Culinary Education and worked professionally for over a decade honing her craft in New York City at places like Balthazar, Bien Cuit, The Chocolate Room, Billy’s Bakery and Whole Foods. Allie took her know-how from the kitchen to the internet, writing about food full-time at Lifehacker for three years and starting her own YouTube channel, ThaiNYbites. You can find her whipping up baked goods for cafés around Brooklyn, building wedding cakes and trying her hand (feet?) at marathon running. She’s working on her debut cookbook and lives in Brooklyn, NY.