Overhead-to-three-quarter food photograph of a tray of freshly made baklava cut into diamonds, deep golden-brown crisp phyllo layers visible at the cut edges, glossy honey syrup pooling faintly at the base, chopped walnuts and pis

Baklava with Raw Honey Syrup

Forty sheets of phyllo, a cinnamon-walnut filling, and a lemony syrup finished with raw honey off the heat. Cut before it bakes and syruped cool-over-hot, so every layer stays shattering crisp.

⏱

Prep Time 45 mins

🍳

Cook Time 1 hr 15 mins (plus 6 hrs to set)

🍽

Servings 24 pieces

October 19, 2026

Ingredients

For the Pastry

1 lb phyllo dough (#4 thickness), 40 sheets roughly 9 × 14 inches, thawed
1¼ cups unsalted butter (2½ sticks)

For the Nut Filling

4 cups walnuts, or half walnuts and half pistachios (about 1 lb)
¼ cup granulated sugar
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
⅛ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp fine sea salt

For the Syrup

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 wide strip lemon peel
1 cinnamon stick

From the Hive

¾ cup Go Honey 100% Pure & Raw Honey

Instructions

Make the Syrup First

Combine the sugar, water, lemon juice, lemon peel and cinnamon stick in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer gently for 10 minutes and pull it off the heat. It needs to be completely cool before it meets the pastry, so this is the first thing you do.

Whisk In the Raw Honey

When the syrup has cooled to lukewarm — under 105°F, cool enough to hold your finger in — fish out the peel and cinnamon stick and whisk in the raw honey. Adding it off the heat keeps the honey's aroma and character intact instead of cooking it flat. Let the syrup come to room temperature.

Clarify the Butter

Melt the butter over low heat without stirring, skim the foam off the top, then pour off the clear golden fat and leave the milky solids behind in the pan. You should have about 1 cup. Clarified butter browns evenly and will not make the layers spotty or soggy.

Prep Nuts and Oven

Heat the oven to 325°F and brush a 9 × 13-inch metal pan with butter. Pulse the nuts in a food processor to a coarse, gravelly texture — stop well before they turn to paste — then toss with the sugar, cinnamon, cloves and salt. Divide into three equal portions, about 1⅓ cups each.

Layer the Phyllo

Unroll the phyllo, keep the stack covered, and lay 10 sheets in the pan one at a time, brushing each lightly with butter. Box sizes vary — if yours holds larger sheets, 13 × 18 is common, cut the stack in half crosswise and count each half as one sheet. Let any overhang run up the sides of the pan and tuck it down with the next brushing of butter. Add a third of the nuts, then 8 buttered sheets, another third, 8 more sheets, the last third, and finish with 14 buttered sheets on top, brushing the final one generously.

Cut, Then Bake

With a sharp thin knife, cut the whole tray into diamonds now — 6 strips lengthwise, then diagonal cuts across — pressing all the way through to the bottom of the pan. Bake 1 hour 15 minutes, rotating once at the 45-minute mark, until deep golden brown and crisp through the middle.

Syrup and Rest

The moment the pan leaves the oven, ladle the room-temperature syrup slowly over the hot baklava, working along the cuts until it is all in. It should hiss. Leave it uncovered at room temperature for at least 6 hours, ideally overnight, so the syrup settles and the layers set. One note before you serve it: the syrup goes in uncooked, so like all raw honey it is not for babies under one year old.

Pro Tip: Phyllo dries out in minutes and then shatters instead of folding, so cover the waiting stack with plastic wrap and lay a barely damp towel over that — never a damp cloth directly on the sheets, which glues them into one wet slab. And if a sheet tears, use it in the middle layers: once it is buttered, stacked and baked, no one will ever find it.