For true believers, baklava without sugar or honey would seem the ultimate insult. After all, the dessert with Mediterranean origins has flourished for centuries sweetened the old-fashioned way.
But a newfangled version of sugar-free baklava has been winning diet-conscious converts at Jaafer Sweets bakery, 4825 N. Kedzie Ave. (312-463-3933).
” People come in and tell me they can’t taste the difference,” says owner Jackie Khalil, who also bakes sugar-free versions of pistachio-filled ” Burma” pastry rolls and other Middle Eastern delicacies.
Though the more popular Greek-style baklava is drenched in honey, Khalil grew up in Jordan, where baklava is sweetened only with sugar and is a postdinner ritual.
For some Jordanian immigrants here, getting a daily fix of baklava has been a hard habit to break. When Khalil’s father-in-law developed diabetes, she recalls, ” He would visit the bakery and say `I’m dying to eat some baklava. Can I have just one?’ and I’d have to tell him no. So I thought it would be nice for him to be able to have his baklava again.”
Disliking the aftertaste of saccharin, Khalil solicited samples of non-sugar sweeteners from some 20 manufacturers before finding one that worked.
The sugar substitute–Khalil wants to keep the trade name a secret–looks and tastes like powdered sugar. When melted into a pale yellow syrup, it is drizzled onto layers of pastry, baked a golden brown, drained and sliced for serving.
Response to the crunchy treat has been positive, says Khalil, who has shipped orders as far afield as Alaska.
The sugar-free baklava costs about 80 cents for a 1 1/2-inch square and like other pastries offered at the bakery, costs $6.50 to $10.50 a pound.
