Hazelnut, apple and tahini pastry cigars
- Published: 14 Nov 18
- Updated: 18 Mar 24
A rich and chewy mix of hazelnuts, tahini, dried fruit and honey are rolled up in filo pastry and baked until crisp. Serve with extra honey for dipping.
This recipe comes from Greek cookery school, Oliveology in Borough Market.
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Makes 24
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Hands-on time 45 min, plus soaking, oven time 20 min
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Ingredients
- 75g currants or sultanas (ideally Greek)
- 45g petimezi (see Know-how)
- 25ml orange blossom water
- 100g toasted hazelnuts, finely ground
- 100g tahini, plus extra for drizzling
- 100g Greek fir honey (from oliveology.com, Sainsbury’s or good delis), plus extra for drizzling
- Grated zest and juice 1 orange
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon, plus extra for sprinkling
- 200g cox apple, grated
- 6 filo pastry sheets
- Olive oil for brushing
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Method
- Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas 4. Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. Put the currants or sultanas in a large bowl with the petimezi and orange blossom water, then leave to soak for 30 minutes.
- Stir in the hazelnuts, tahini, honey, orange zest and juice, cinnamon and apple.
- With the long side facing you, cut the filo sheets vertically into 4 even strips. Keep covered under a damp tea towel.
- Brush one strip with a little oil. Spread a spoonful of filling onto one end of the strip, leaving a 1cm border. Fold the bottom of the sheet over the filling and roll up the pastry, tucking in the sides as you go. Transfer to a prepared baking sheet and brush with a little extra oil.
- Repeat with the remaining pastry strips, then bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool on the baking sheets.
- Pile the cigars into a bowl, drizzle with tahini, honey and a sprinkle of cinnamon.
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- Recipe from August 2018 Issue
Nutrition
Per cigar
Nutrition: per serving
- Calories
- 120kcals
- Fat
- 6.9g (0.8g saturated)
- Protein
- 2.6g
- Carbohydrates
- 11.3g (8.2g sugars)
- Fibre
- 1.1g
- Salt
- trace
delicious. tips
Make the hazelnut filling up to 48 hours ahead and store in an airtight container in the fridge.
Petimezi is grape molasses. Drizzle it over pancakes or yogurt. Buy it at oliveology.co.uk. If you can’t find grape molasses, you can use pomegranate molasses instead.
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It is a winning flavour combination; however, the recipe has some serious issues. There is no flour, and not enough dry ingredients (only currants and ground hazelnuts) to soak up all the liquid in the filling (orange blossom water, molasses, tahini, orange juice, juice from the grated apple and honey!). Thankfully I realised that it was not feasible just by looking at the quantities, so I used the juice of only half an orange, and it was still a sloppy mess. I added almond meal and a tablespoon of coconut flour to soak up some of the liquid. The final product was delicious, but the recipe needs some serious tweaks for it to actually work, because not everyone can improvise during the actual cook. Next time, I would completely leave out the orange juice.
Hi Anuja, thanks for your feedback! Each recipe we publish gets triple tested, so it’s disappointing to hear this didn’t work for you. We will test this again and get back to you. We wonder which tahini you have been using? They vary in liquid state, so that might affect things a bit.