Nadya shows you how to make Tikvenik which is a traditional Bulgarian sweet pastry. There are some differences in comparison to the recipes you would normally find. You can find the full instructions down below:
Ingredients:
- 1/3 of a medium pumpkin
- 300g sugar
- 300ml vegetable oil
- a cup of coarsely ground walnuts
- ground cinnamon
- a pack of filo pastry (500g)
Step 1
Cut, peel and grate the pumpkin. Initially I started to grate but then decided to chop the pumpkin in the blender as it was easier and also I won’t be frying the pumpkin like in the traditional recipe, therefore it will cook better that way.
Step 2
Fill the pastry with the ingredients. The way I do that is by moving the top pastry sheet to one side and then put good amount of vegetable oil on the one to the bottom. Then, I spread evenly a bit of the grated pumpkin so the whole sheet is covered and after this is done, I take two spoonfuls of sugar and also spread that on top of the pumpkin. The last two things to be added are the walnuts and the cinnamon. Then, take the pastry sheet you previously put to one side and put it on top and roll the two sheets with the rest of the ingredients together and place it on an pre-oiled baking tray as shown.
That’s what you need to do until the last pastry sheet is done!
After that put the Tikvenik in preheated oven to 180C and bake until ready/golden brown.
Step 3
Make sugar syrup.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of water
- 2 cups of sugar
Now this is a step a lot of people don’t do and they just bake the Tikvenik and cover with the icing sugar. However, here in Bachevo, people would make a sugar syrup to cover their Tikvenik in the end.
I add two parts of water to two parts of sugar into a pan. Then, I bring this to the boil. The longer you boil it the thicker the syrup will be, also if you don’t want it to be that thick and sugary you can use two parts of water and one part of sugar.
Step 4
Cover the Tikvenik with syrup. Once the syrup is ready, make sure you cool it down. This is an important step because when you are using a sugar syrup the pastry should be warm and syrup cool or the opposite way around, as if they are both super hot, the pastry will just mush.
Be generous with the syrup as the pastry will absorb it, spread it all over and cover the whole tray with clean cloth in the end.
This is it! Very easy but so tasty! Enjoy!
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