Greek Christmas Recipe - Melomakarona

Easy recipe for the traditional greek pastry

Melomakarona is probably the most popular christmas pastry in Greece. The word in greek means "spaghetti with honey" but of course it has nothing to do with what you are going to eat.

Ingredients

For the melomakarona

400gr orange juice

530gr olive oil

1200gr flour

30gr powdered sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/6 tsp ground clove

50gr molten butter

zest from an orange

crashed walnuts

For the syrup

500gr water

700gr sugar

1 orange cut in the middle

2 cinnamon sticks

100gr honey

Directions

Syrup

We put all the syrup ingredients in a pan, except for the honey. We boil them for one minute and take the pan away from the heat. We add the honey and let the syrup cool down.

Melomakarona

In a deep pot we mix all liquid ingredients and the butter. In the mixture we add all the herbs and the sugar. We start mixing with our hand and add the flour, mixing until we have a fine mixture. We shouldn't mix to much so that it doesn't become too tight.

We make small oval shaped biscuits. Beware that when baked they will triple in size.

We bake them on baking paper in a preheated oven (180 celsius) for almost 30 minutes. We remove them from the oven when they acquire a dark golden colour and put them in the cold syrup. We turn them from side to side with a spoon for about a minute. We remove them from the syrup and let them dry. Finally we scatter the crushed wlanuts over them and they are ready!

Enjoy!