Paklava

  
When I made my decision about what we were going to cook in class last week I was confident it was the right decision. I was excited to teach the kids about this unique food from another culture. I was certain they’d love the flavors, the process—all of it.

And then I suddenly thought, “Are you INSANE?! Phyllo dough with nine kids under the age of 12?!” I flashed back to the time we used phyllo dough in one of my very first Young Epicureans classes. The kids in those classes are 12 and up, and they had a doozy of a time working with that paper thin dough. I can’t tell you how many damp paper towels I removed from cutting boards as they were about to be folded neatly into spanikopita triangles. The kids mistook the paper towels for dough over and over again. Laughter rang through the kitchen each time. They were having fun, at least! We threw away countless dried out sheets of dough, and I even had to have a friend run to the supermarket for more during class, which is something that had never happened before and has never happened since. 

I’d already purchased all the ingredients for Sunday’s class at that point. Too late to turn back.

We started out slowly, chopping walnuts and almonds, melting butter, grating orange and lemon zests, and then the phyllo dough. I cut sheets into quarters and handed everyone a small stack.   They brushed and stacked and filled and stacked and brushed their way to the tops of their mini loaf pans without incident. To my joy and amazement, using phyllo dough went incredibly well this time. 
No paper towels had to be removed, and hardly a sheet was wasted. I’d bought three pounds of dough in anticipation of the worst and we used exactly one. Every paklava (think baklava, but from Armenia, not Greece) that emerged hot from the oven looked and tasted wonderful. Um…that is, until I gave them forks, which they used to pulverize the perfectly browned phyllo into piles of sweet shards of dessert debris.

Ah well.  Perhaps in this case a third time will be the charm.