Honey Glazed Sweet Filo Parcels

During my trip to Marrakech, I found a very interesting dish called Briouat. Traditionally they are made as savoury dishes and has lots of different types of filling in them. My sweet filo parcels are inspired by this versatile dish. I have been thinking of making some thing lavish and luxurious for some time. This time I wanted to do something different from cake or brownie, also my better half challenged me that I can only do these or some chocolate dessert! Can you believe that! So I thought of facing that and bake some thing which is not cakes or cake-like or has chocolate in it.  When I finished making these I felt so temped to drizzle some dark chocolate sauce on them but because I had to show him that I can work without chocolate, I didn’t!

While making these parcels I couldn’t resists thinking how similar are they to the samosas. Especially the ones made with filo pastry. Traditionally they are filled with minced meat or any other savoury filling, which is again very similar to samosas only difference is most samosas are deep fried and these are baked. I decided to make one more change and that is to keep one side of the parcel open and looks more like a cone filled with sweet filling than a closed two dimensional triangle. Anyway here goes the recipe, I made my own version of this Moroccan dessert, hope you like it! 

This recipe makes 20 parcels.

Ingredients:

For the filling:

1.5 oz semolina

3 green cardamom whole (use seeds only)

1 oz butter

1 oz ground almond

4 oz milk

1.5 oz sugar

For the wrapping:

5 sheets of filo pastry

4 oz melted butter

For the honey glaze:

6 oz honey

3 oz water

2 tbsp rose water

2 cloves 

Method:

Place a heavy bottom saucepan on the hob on medium/low heat and dry roast the semolina and the ground almond until the sweet aroma comes out and the colour turns light brown. Be careful not to burn it because at this point if you don’t keep an eye on it, the semolina will burn very fast. Now add the butter, sugar and the crushed seeds of the green cardamom and continue to mix over a low flame. When mixed well add the lukewarm milk in to it and stir continuously so that no lumps are formed and the mix is uniform.

Thaw frozen filo pastry for 2 hours outside fridge. On a cutting board take one filo pastry sheet at a time and brush the melted butter on one half of the sheet. Fold the other half on the buttered side. Repeat the step one more time and then cut it into four equal pieces. Now place a tea spoon full of filling on one corner to the centre of a filo pastry. Take one corner and fold over the filling in such a way that it looks like a cone cut in half. brush a little butter on the sides and bring the opposite corner on top of the half cone and complete the cone shape. Push the filling inside the cone so that the cone is filled but cone shape is not broken. if require add some more filling on top to fill the cone. Place the cone on a baking sheet and brush it with melted butter all around. Repeat the procedure for rest of the cones.

Pre heat the oven at 180 degree C/ Gas mark 4 and bake these cone pastries  for 20-25 minutes or until they are golden.

In a saucepan start making the honey syrup by boiling water with cloves in it. After 2-3 minutes when the water is reduced a bit add the honey and reduce the flame. Mix well, wait till the honey syrup is warm evenly then take it off the heat. Let it cool for 5 minutes or so. Dip the hot cones in the syrup and keep them there for 10 sec and remove from the syrup. let them rest on a plate for some time then serve.