Heavenly moist, nutty, tender, aromatic – simply delicious is the Sochi pie, also called Sochi or light baklava. With this recipe you can make the popular Azerbaijani sweet yourself. It's pretty easy and with a few common ingredients.
Course Dessert
Cuisine Azerbaijani
Prep Time 25 minutesminutes
Cook Time 1 hourhour
Cooling time 1 hourhour
Servings 18
Equipment
square, 24 cm x 24 cm baking pan
Ingredients
for the dough
150gbutter(cold)
120gsour cream(cold)
2egg yolks(cold)
300gflour
4gbaking powder
8gvanilla sugar
1pinch ofsalt
flour for the work surface
for the filling
250gwalnut kernels(roasted and finely chopped)
200gsugar
3egg whites
1pinch ofsalt
for the coating
1egg yolk
1tbspmilk
for the decorating
walnut kernelsquartered
for the cover
approx. 70ghoney
Instructions
Preparation of the dough
Mix flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar and salt in a mixing bowl.
Add cold butter and quickly chop it finely. You can also do it in a mixer or roll butter in flour and grate it.
Add cold egg yolks and sour cream and knead it briskly and briefly into a soft dough.
Divide the dough into three equal pieces and chill them, covered, for 1 hour.
Preparation of the filling
Beat egg whites with salt until foamy, add sugar in batches and beat until stiff.
Add roasted and finely chopped walnuts to the egg white mixture.
Preparation of the pie
Line the baking pan with baking paper.
Dust the work surface with flour, first take out a piece of dough from the refrigerator and roll it out thinly into a rectangle about 24 cm x 24 cm (or as large as your baking pan). Place the dough patty in the baking pan and spread half of the walnut meringue filling on top. Now roll out a second piece of dough thinly into a rectangle, place it on top of the filling in the baking pan, and spread the second half of the filling on top. Roll out the third piece of dough again thinly into a rectangle and place it in the same way on top of the filling in the baking pan.
Whisk egg yolk with milk and spread it on the cake in the baking pan.
Carefully cut the cake in the baking pan with a sharp knife into diamonds or rectangles and lightly press 1/4 of a walnut kernel into the center of each diamond (or rectangle).
Bake the Sochi baklava in a preheated oven at 180 °C top and bottom heat for about 40 minutes. After that, take it out of the oven, spread it immediately with honey, warm it up first if it is not liquid enough, and bake the baklava for another 5 minutes.
Let the Sochi pie cool down a bit in the baking pan, take it out of the pan and let it cool down completely.
Notes
Do not knead the dough too long in any case, knead it briefly until it reaches a homogeneous consistency. Otherwise, after baking, it might taste dry instead of soft and fluffy.
To check if the Sochi pie is baked, do a chopstick test. To do this, briefly insert a wooden skewer into the cake in a few places and see if it comes out almost clean. If the wooden skewer remains smeared in raw dough or beaten egg whites, you still need to bake the cake. If only a few moist crumbs or walnut pieces remain on the wooden skewer, the cake is done.
Note the detailed tips and tricks for making the Sochi baklava at the top of the post.