A Greek Classic dessert, the celebration of my childhood!
ingredients for 8 generous servings (total cost about 8€ with organic ingredients)
for the cake
- 2 large eggs (about 125 g)
- 100 g sugar
- 125 g butter completely softened
- 75 g pastry (soft) wheat flour
- 75 g semolina
- 150 g walnuts + 20 g for sprinkling on top
- 35 ml orange juice
- 35 ml milk
- 6 g baking powder
- zest from 2 oranges
- 5 g cinnamon
- 1 g clove
- 0.5 g nutmeg
for the syrup
- 250 ml of water
- 25 ml orange juice
- 25 ml brandy or orange liqueur (Grand Marnier or Cointreau)
- 150 g sugar
- the peels from the orange that we squeezed
- 1 clove
- cinnamon stick
Karidopita is an iconic dessert of the Athenian confectionery tradition. It is a rich butter cake flavored with orange, cinnamon, cloves and other spices and soaked in a syrup, perfumed with the same aromatics, as well as some alcohol, in most cases. Every traditional Athenian confectionery store, includes it in its catalogue.
Karidopita is also the cake that my beloved grandma would make every year for my name day (on 25 November). Therefore, it has a particular place in my childhood memories and my heart, like my grandmother does.
Apart from the “Athinaiki”, there is another version of karidopita, the “brunette” (melachrini), which is more like a sponge cake, since it mostly based in eggs, having no, or little butter. We will make it another time.
So to make the karidopita, we begin by the syrup.
We squeeze 1 orange, we collect 25 ml juice and we cut the peels to julienne. We place all the ingredients in a saucepan (except for the alcohol), we bring to boil and we let it for 3 more minutes. We remove from the heat, we add the alcohol, we cover with a lid and we let the syrup with the aromatics inside to infuse and cool.
To make the cake, in a small bowl we briefly mix the liquid ingredients – eggs, salt, milk, orange juice – as well as the zest and we set aside. In the mixer bowl we sift the flours, with the baking powder, the spices and the sugar. We coarsely grind the walnuts in the food processor, we add them to the rest of the solid ingredients and we mix them to combine with each other.
We add the already well softened butter and half of the liquid mixture and we beat at low speed, until the solids are just soaked, then we raise the speed and we beat for another minute or so.
We add the remaining liquid mixture in two batches, beating briefly, just to incorporate them into the mixture. (Avoid beating too much so as not to activate the gluten).
We transfer to a 22×5 cm round tin cake, previously buttered, lined with paper parchment, re-buttered and floured and we bake at 180 C (or 160 C with ventilator) for about 40-45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean from the center.
As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, we pour the syrup over it slowly, one ladle at a time, adding every next ladle after the previous one has been well absorbed by the cake.
We let the cake soak in the syrup inside the cake tin, until it cools completely (at least 1 hour), before unmolding. We decorate with coarsely chopped or ground walnuts and the julienne orange peels of the syrup.
