White chocolate baklawa crackles

Middle Eastern and Australian flavours take you back to your childhood thanks to this fancy choc crackle. It almost feels mandatory to host a birthday party, now! #BringBackTheClassics

• makes

  16-18

• prep

  15 minutes

• difficulty

  Easy

Ingredients

• 4 cups rice bubbles cereal
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 cup desiccated coconut
• 250 g copha, melted
• ¼ cup walnuts, roughly chopped
• ¼ cup pistachios, roughly chopped
• ¼ cup almonds, slivered
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 3 tsp rosewater

For decorating

• 2 sheets filo pastry
• 2 tbsp butter, melted
• ¼ tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp castor sugar
• 1 tbsp pistachio, finely chopped
• edible rose petals 

Chilling time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Instructions

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Melt the copha in a saucepan over medium heat. Once block is entirely melted, set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, add rice bubbles, icing sugar, coconut, nuts, cinnamon and rosewater. Add copha and mix really well. Rice bubbles and other dry ingredients should be entirely coated with copha.   

Spoon the ingredients into 16 (large) or 18 (regular size) paper patty cases. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes until firm.

In the meantime, place one sheet of filo pastry on an oven tray that is lined with baking paper. Brush half the sheet of pastry with melted butter. Fold over filo pastry sheet in half. Brush again with melted butter. Combine the cinnamon and castor sugar and sprinkle over sheet of filo.

Repeat the above step with second sheet of filo. You should now have 2 sheets of buttered filo, folded in half and stacked on top of one another. Sprinkle the top of filo sheets with more cinnamon sugar. Retain remaining cinnamon sugar for decorating. 

Using kitchen scissors cut up the stacked filo sheets into approximately 16 squares. Squares do not need to be evenly shaped or measured. Once decorating, this will just make breaking up into shards easier. Separate squares on tray leaving a centimetre gap between each.

Place in preheated oven for 5 minutes until filo is golden and crispy.

Remove white chocolate crackles from the fridge.

To decorate, drizzle melted white chocolate on to each. Break up a square of crispy cinnamon filo into shards and place on top. Drizzle a little more melted chocolate and a sprinkle of pistachio, cinnamon sugar and rose petals.

Refrigerate for a further hour until white chocolate crackles are firm.

Photography, styling and food preparation by Lina Jebeil.

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.