This is definitely a treat, not an everyday food: fair warning. But I was thinking about homemade Larabars, couldn't find any dried dates in our pantry, and it occurred to me that, minus the phyllo dough, baklava is basically just nuts and honey, right? What could be more paleo than that? I made a small batch, but this could easily be scaled up. It probably would still be very good with considerably less honey, as this mixture was pretty sweet. But I was going for something pretty sweet and succeeded.
4 oz mixed nuts (I used pistachios, walnuts, pecans, and almonds)
1/4 c. grass-fed butter (I used clarified butter)
1/4 c. raw honey
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp lemon juice
Put nuts in your handy-dandy food processor and process the heck--by which I mean all the large chunks--out of them. Add remaining ingredients and process until you have a nice smooth mixture. It will still be kind of wet (perhaps another argument for less honey), but you can either eat it by the spoonful or get all serious about it and scoop it out onto wax paper in little balls (we've got a scoop that's perfect for this... if you don't, I pity you, but I'm sure you can make do with something else). Flatten the balls and place in the freezer for a half hour (or as long as you can stand to wait).
The recipe above made a mere 5 mini-pucks of baklava goodness, plus some to be licked out of the pan. Which was fine, since I ate them all yesterday afternoon and couldn't have eaten more than that.
