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melomakarona – the Greek Christmas honey and nut pastries

A burst of spices and citrus flavors, in these Greek Classic Christmas biscuits!


ingredients (cost about 12 € for 40 biscuits)

for the syrup

  • 250 ml water
  • 200 g sugar
  • 290 g honey
  • Peels from the 2 oranges and 2 tangerines
  • 1 cinnamon stick

for the dough

  • 400 g pastry flour
  • 100 g fine semolina flour
  • 100 g EV sunflower oil
  • 100 g EVO oil (of a light taste)
  • 120 ml tangerine and orange juice
  • zest from 2 oranges
  • 70 g icing sugar
  • 8 g ground cinnamon
  • 1 g ground cloves
  • 10 g baking powder
  • 3 g baking ammonia
  • 3 g salt

for sprinkling

  • 150 g coarsely ground walnuts

Melomakarona are – along with kourabiedes – the Greek Classic Christmas sweet treats. They are oval oil small pastries, perfumed with spices, such as cinnamon, cloves and orange zest, immerged in a honey syrup and sprinkled with plenty of ground walnuts.

To prepare them, we begin by making the syrup. We peel 2 oranges and 2 tangerines, we grate another 2 oranges and we squeeze their juice. We keep the juice and the zest, to add it to the dough.

In a saucepan we pour the water, sugar, citrus peels and cinnamon stick and bring to a boil. We let it boil for about 1 minute, then lower it to the minimum and simmer for about 10 minutes. We remove from the heat and add the honey, stirring lightly to dissolve it in the syrup. We cover the saucepan with cling film and let it infuse, until it cools completely.

While the syrup cools, we prepare the biscuits dough.

First of all we sieve flour, baking powder, baking ammonia, icing sugar, salt and spices in a bowl. We stir well so that the ingredients are well blended. We then add the oil and the orange zest and we bring the flour little by little towards the center in circular movements, until all of it absorbs the oil. Finally, we add the juice little by little, just until the dough comes together and it becomes homogeneous, soft and pliable. Keep in mind, that depending on the type of flour we are using, the amount of liquid we are adding may vary (not every flour has the same absorbing capacity). I used 120 g of juice.

We let the dough rest for about 30 minutes covered with a towel or cling film, to avoid the drying of the surface.

We shape the melomakarona, by cutting pieces from the dough and weighting them to be about 23-24 g each. We form them gently in our palm on oval flat biscuits, and place them on baking sheets covered with baking paper, leaving enough space between them, because during baking they will expand. We press them lightly from above with our palm to make the surface a little flat.

We bake the melomakarona in a preheated oven (at 160o C – ventilated function or 180 o C – static function) for about 20 to 25 minutes or until lightly browned.

While the melomakarona are being baked, we coarsely grind the walnuts and strain the syrup.

Immediately after removing the biscuits from the oven, while they are still hot, we dip them in the syrup, little by little, turning them with a spoon on both sides for about 1 minute. If we want them very syrupy, we pour over them with as much syrup as there is left over. We transfer them to a serving plate, lined with some chopped walnuts, then sprinkle with extra chopped walnuts.

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Published in DESSERTS

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