Baklava, layer by layer
Real baklava uses forty or more sheets of yufka stretched until a newspaper can be read through them, brushed with butter, packed with pistachio or walnut, baked, then soaked in syrup at a carefully opposite temperature to the pastry. Too hot and it goes soggy; too cool and the syrup sits on the surface.
Sweet dishes that started as breakfast
Syrniki, blini and sweet vareniki all cross the line between breakfast and dessert in Slavic homes. Cherry vareniki with sour cream is a dessert anywhere else in the world and a Tuesday morning in Ukraine.
What to drink with dessert
Turkish coffee with baklava is the classic pairing — the bitterness cuts the syrup. Black tea in a tulip glass works the same way. With Slavic sweets, tea with jam or a strong filter coffee is the traditional match.