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

1st mix

500g sunflower oil

400g fresh orange juice

50g icing sugar

30ml brandy

1 tsp soda diluted in 1 tbsp lemon juice

Grated rind from 1 orange

2nd mix

1100g flour

100g fine semolina

7g cinnamon

4g grated cloves

3g grated nutmeg

10g baking powder

For the syrup

500g water

700g sugar

2 cinnamon sticks

1 orange cut in half

100g honey

For the decoration

60g honey preferably thyme

150g roughly grated walnuts

Preparation

First prepare the syrup and let it cool because you need the syrup to be cold and the melomakarona to be hot when you dip them in the syrup.

Syrup

Put all the syrup ingredients apart from the honey in a pan and bring to the boil for 2 minutes.

Remove from the heat, add the honey and stir, then set aside to cool.

Melomakarona

In a shallow pan mix all the ingredients from the 1^st mix. Mix them really well by hand, not by mixer.

In a mixing bowl mix all the ingredients from the 2^nd mix.

Gradually add the ingredients from the 2^nd mix into the pan with the 1^st mix.

Mix them by hand to make a dough, but it is very important not to handle this dough a lot because that will remove the oil from the mixture.

Again handling the dough as little as possible, form them into small oval shapes (see photo) and put them on baking trays covered with greaseproof paper.

Bake them one tray at a time in a preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes.

As soon as you remove them from the oven, dip them carefully – a few at a time - in the pan with the cold syrup. Leave them in there for about 1 minute, making sure they are fully immersed in the syrup.

Remove and place on a tray and repeat with the other melomakarona while they are still hot.

Repeat the same process with the other baking trays.

Finally, pour the thyme honey over the melomakarona and then sprinkle the grated walnuts on top. Let them cool and place them on your decorated dishes or in a plastic container, but not in the fridge. They keep for at least a week.

If you've tried this recipe please rate it!

Eat And Enjoy!