nutty apricot bundles

A few weeks back I bought phyllo dough not knowing exactly what I wanted to do with it. Jared was never a huge fan of baklava (although, I liked it) so I knew I wasn’t going to try to veganize a real baklava. Its hard for Jared to pin down what he didn't like about baklava, but I think it had something to so with the some times use of pistachios and rosewater. I still wanted a sweet treat and nuts and apricots came to mind with a buttery and crispy phyllo cover.
My concoction started with a simple syrup of water and turbinado sugar, a cinnamon stick and a couple of whole cloves. I added in a handful of dried apricots and rehydrated them in the spiced simple syrup. Once the syrup cooked down to about half and the apricots were soft, I removed the cinnamon sticks and cloves and added a bit of whipped Earth Balance. This created a sort of spicy, loose caramel sauce. Once the syrupy apricots cooled, I added the apricots and all the syrup to my food processor with a handful of walnuts, a handful of pecans and a pinch of salt. After grinding in the food processor, what resulted was an extremely thick paste. Next I melted a few tbsp of Earth Balance buttery stick and individually brushed each sheet of phyllo dough about four sheets high at a time. I cut the four stacked buttery sheets in strips and placed them in muffin tins to create a cup. I added the filling and folded over the laps of phyllo, brushed the tops with the left over melted Earth Balance and baked them (in a preheated oven) at 350 until brown and crispy. While these did kind of have a baklava taste and feel to them, Jared still gobbled them up, as did I.
Bundled and baked:

Baked, cooled and cut open to see the filling: