Traditional Greek Christmas Sweets - Melomakarona

Well, it's Christmas time again, so we're posting recipes for traditional Greek Christmas sweets for you. Today it's Melomakarona, which is my particular favourite, and tomorrow I'll be posting the recipe for Kourambiedes.

In between Christmas and New Year I'll post the recipe for Vassilopitta, which is the traditional New Year cake in Greece, with the good-luck charm or coin in it.


Ingredients

9 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup fine semolina
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
2 cups ground walnuts
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup sunflower oil
250g soft butter
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon soda
2/3 cup icing sugar
½ cup brandy
Juice from 2 oranges
Juice from ½ lemon

For the syrup

500g water
700g icing sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
1 orange cut in half
300g thyme honey


Preparation

First prepare the syrup so that it has cooled by the time you come to pour it on the melomakarona.

Syrup

Put all the ingredients except the honey in a pan and boil for 10 minutes.

Remove from the heat, add 100g honey and set aside to cool.

Melomakarona

Beat the sugar, olive oil, sunflower oil and butter in a mixer for 15 minutes.

Add the orange juice and the egg yolks and continue beating until the mixture has formed a creamy texture.

Add the brandy.

Dissolve the soda in the lemon juice and add to the mixture and keep beating for another minute.

Take a cup of flour and add to it the nutmeg, cinnamon, baking powder and cloves.

Add this mixture to the rest of the flour.

Make a dough with the liquid mixture from the mixer and the flour gently with your hands, but it is very important that you don’t overhandle the dough.

Take small portions of the dough and roll them into oval balls in your palm and place them on a non-stick oven dish.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for 15 minutes.

While they are still warm, dip them in the cold syrup and place them in a layer on a Christmas decorated oven dish.

Take a spoonful of honey diluted with ½ cup of syrup and spread over the melomakarona.

Sprinkle the ground walnuts on top.

Continue placing layers on top in a pyramid fashion, repeating the process with the syrup and nuts for each layer.

You can find here more recipes likes this...

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