Our most christmassy recipes made with love
Melomakarona cookies are soft cake-like cookies that are scented with orange and cinnamon, soaked in honey syrup and covered with crushed walnuts. Let’s walk through what you’ll need to make these cookies.
Ingredients
For the syrup
2 cups honey
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
For the cookies
1 cup olive oil
1 cup corn oil
¾ cups sugar
1 cup cognac
300g orange juice
7 ½ flour (soft)
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Method
For the syrup
Boil all of the ingredients for the syrup, apart from honey, until sugar melts. Remove from heat. Add the honey and mix till combined.
Let the syrup cool for 3-4 hours. It must be cold by the time the cookies come out from the oven.
For the cookies
Preheat the oven to 180* C (350*F) Fan.
Add all of the ingredients to a large bowl. Mix, using a hand whisk.
Mix by hand, very gently and for a very short time (10 seconds at the most). If you mix longer the mixture will split or curdle.
Mold cookie dough into oval shapes, 3-4 cm in length, 30 g each. Try to keep them as similar as possible.
Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until they are crunchy and dark golden brown.
As soon as you remove them from the oven, soak the hot cookies in the syrup for 10 seconds.
Allow them to drain on a wire rack.
Drizzle with honey and chopped walnuts.
Greek almond snowballs – Kourabiedes
This is a delicious, melt-in-your-mouth, traditional Greek sweet called “Kourabiedes”. Sweet and crumbly, with crunchy toasted almonds and they look so Christmassy!
Ingredients
900 g all-purpose flour
500 g butter, sheep butter
220 g icing sugar
1 g vanilla powder
1 teaspoon(s) bitter almond liqueur
200 g almond slivers, blanched slivered, toasted
1 teaspoon(s) rosewater
To serve
300 g icing sugar
1 tablespoon(s) rosewater
Method
Remove the butter from the refrigerator about 2-3 hours before using, so that it can soften at room temperature.
Preheat the oven to 180* C (350*F) Fan.
In the mixer using the whisk attachment, beat the butter for 5-6 minutes on high speed until it turns white. Add the icing sugar and vanilla. Continue beating for another 5-7 minutes. As soon as the sugar is added, the volume of the butter may lessen but it will rise again. It will be ready when it looks like whipped cream.
Remove the mixing bowl and add the flour in batches. Gently fold in with a spatula and add then add the almonds.
The mixture should be soft but not that soft that it will stick to your hands.
Mold into balls the size of walnuts (25 g). Place them in rows, on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Make a small indentation on top of every little ball of dough with your finger. This way it will it can hold on to more icing sugar.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until they turn light golden.
Remove from oven. Carefully move them from the baking sheet and place them on a wire rack to cool. They are very soft and crumbly when hot.
When cool, spray them with some rose water.
Put some icing sugar in a sieve and dust.