Ingredients
Pastry:
- 500g flour, sifted
- 6g salt
- 330ml water
- 30ml olive oil
- 5ml apple cider vinegar
- 125g corn flour, for dusting
Cream filling:
- 500g cream cheese
- 500g marscapone cheese
- 60ml honey
- 250g vanilla halva
- 10ml cinnamon, ground
- 10ml cardamom, ground
- 5ml vanilla paste
Nut filling:
- 100g pistachios, chopped
- 100g almonds, chopped
- 100g cashews, chopped
- 60ml honey
- 10ml cinnamon
- 80g butter, melted
Syrup:
- 225g sugar
- 60ml honey
- 180ml water
- 10ml lemon juice
- 5ml rose water
- 5ml orange blossom water
Garnish - roses:
- 125g phyllo pastry
- cinnamon
- sugar
Garnish - phyllo shards:
- 100g phyllo pastry
Garnish:
- 180g pistachios, sliced
- 30g rose petals, dried
Preparation method
Pastry:
- Heat water to 50 C
- Place flour, salt and warm water in a bowl
- Mix until dough starts to come together
- Add oil and vinegar
- Knead dough well for 3-4 minutes
- Shape dough into ball
- Divide dough into 40g pieces
- Dust each piece with corn flour
- Leave to rest for 10 minutes
- Roll a piece of dough into a 20cm circle, using a rolling pin or dowel stick
- Stretch out the dough
- Keep dusting the dough with corn flour
- Dough should be 0.5mm thick
- Cover with a damp cloth
- Repeat this process with the rest of the dough pieces
Cream filling:
- Combine all the ingredients
- Leave to chill until ready to use
Nut filling:
- Chop nuts finely
- Add melted butter, sugar, honey and spices to nuts
Assembly:
- Pre-heat oven to 180 C
- Brush the base of 2 x 20cm round pans with butter
- Cut 20 x 20 cm phyllo circles
- Place 4 pastry circles into each pan
- Brush each layer with butter
- Sprinkle the nut filling over the top layer of phyllo
- Bake at 180 C for 25 minutes
- Remove from the oven
- Drizzle the cold syrup over the hot phyllo layers
- Repeat process until you have 5 sets of 4 pastry layers
Syrup:
- Heat sugar, honey, water and lemon juice
- Boil until syrup thickens
- Remove from heat
- Add in rose water and orange blossom water
- Set aside
Garnish - roses:
- Roll out dough into 10cm x 5cm rectangles
- Fold each rectangle in half, lengthwise, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar
- Starting at one end, roll the pastry to shape a rose
- Bake at 180 C for 15 minutes
- Paint the roses with gold lustre dust
Garnish - phyllo shards:
- Use remaining phyllo pastry and tear into pieces
- Brush well with melted butter
- Bake at 180 C until golden in colour
Garnish - Assembly:
- Place one layer of baked phyllo pastry onto a board
- Pipe the cream cheese filling onto the top of the nuts
- Place the second phyllo pastry layer on top of the cream cheese layer
- Repeat this process until you get to the last layer of phyllo pastry
- Press sliced pistachios onto the sides of the cheesecake
- Decorate the top layer with the phyllo shards, roses, pistachios and dried rose petals