The Greek Food

Category: Desserts

  • Easy to make Greek orange cake recipe

    Easy to make Greek orange cake recipe

    When i was young i didn’t remember at all eating any orange cake. It was basically chocolate all day. As you get older though you just start to appreciate those things a little bit more. The following orange recipe came from my mother and she reminded to me how many times she has experimented in the past with cake recipes.

    Obviously, its a bit too much to say that it is a Greek orange recipe as i bet many others similar to this one exist all over the world. But.. that’s how we were eating it at home.

    Cakes like that are so easy to make that you can use it as a base for various other cake recipes

    Orange Cake recipe ingredients

    • 150gr sugar
    • 180gr of carrots shredded
    • 60gr of olive oil
    • 100gr of shredded walnuts
    • 200gr of orange juice
    • 1/2 of small spoon baking powder
    • the zest from one orange (or vanilla)
    • 300gr self raising flower

    For the cream

    • 250gr of cream cheese
    • 1 +1/4 cup of sugar
    • 1/2 cup whipping cream

    How do we do it?

    • We preheat the oven at 170c
    • Add olive oil in one baking tin for cakes and put it in the fridge.
    • In a big bowl, we add olive oil, sugar, the orange juice, the baking powder, carrots, the orange zest, cinnamon and the clove.  Mix them all and add slowly the flour spoon by spoon.
    • Remove the baking pot from the fridge and add flour on the sides to not stick. Pour all of our mixture over there and bake for 40 to 45 minutes.

    • Mix the sugar with the whipping cream. In a separate bowl we mix the cheese to become more fluffy and then we mix both of them. 
    • When the cake is done,let it cool down first and then add on top the cream and cover all sides …Alternatively, you can add just sugar.

  • How to make easter bread – Tsoureki

    How to make easter bread – Tsoureki

    Easter is special. It has a variety of different foods and recipes that are available on the table and made just for that day. One of them is the traditional easter bread that in Greek is called, Tsoureki

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  • Kourabiedes – Traditional Greek Christmas Cookie Recipe

    Kourabiedes – Traditional Greek Christmas Cookie Recipe

    During Christmas there are two cookies that were and still are very much traditional in our house.  Eating isli and kourabiedes. While i have covered the first in a previous article it is time i think to focus on the latter. 

    Kourabiedes are cookies that are dived in sugar and because of there white appearance are really popular during Christmas.  When you see them, they may resemble light and airy shortbread, but are made with the addition of almonds. Almonds are the most important ingredient in a Kourabied, and provide the cookie’s signature almond flavor. Other ingredients include large amount of butter, as well as flour, sugar, salt, and vanilla extract, among others.  

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BdJcVxiHlXx/

    In the past few years i always remembered my mother experimenting with kourambiedes and trying to create a less sugary version  of them.

    INGREDIENTS FOR KOURABIEDES

    • 700gr of flower
    • 500gr of butter 
    • 2 eggs
    • 50gr cognac +20gr mastic
    • 1vanilla sticks 
    • 100gr powdered sugar
    • 140gr of almonds
    • 1 spoon of baking soda

    For the topping

    2 x 200 gr of white chocolate

    kourabiedes
    Our Kourabiedes are ready!

    HOW TO MAKE KOURABIEDES

    1. Start by roasting the almonds. Place the roughly chopped almonds on a baking tray and sprinkle with some water. Bake them for 7-8 minutes, until roasted, being careful not to burn them. Set aside or put in the fridge to cool down
    2. In the mixer continue by “hitting” the butter with the powdered sugar for 10 minutes until they become cream.
    3. Add one by one the eggs, the vanilla and soda. Afterwards, 2-3 spoons of flour so the mixture is ready to accept the cognac. Afterwards, we add the almonds. 
    4. Now its time to add the rest of the flour  slowly from the sieve. Continue to mix, until the flour is soaked.  Be careful though not to over do it. 
    5. Take slowly and make small -bit flattish- balls of 30gr each. Put them in the oven and bake them on 170c for 20 minutes. 
    6. As we bake them, in a small pot, we melt around of 200gr of  white chocolate. 

     

     

     

     

  • Home made marmalade

    Home made marmalade

    Greek mothers as always cannot leave their children no matter how old they are (30 going to 31) and for them they will always be 7 and in need for mothers care. I am sure that all of you have seen the movie “My big fat Greek wedding” so I don’t need to explain anything more.

    My mother is more or less the same, even if I am 10+ years in UK she still tries to find an opportunity to send me something that I can eat… Lately after a lot of fights she has settled in sending just Jam’s, lots of them.

    Even if still I have to admit I don’t eat much of them in the morning (my brother does) they are really nice and tasty.  I always remember her fighting with my father whether it’s better to melt the fruits to create marmalades or eat them as they are. Anyhow, I have received any possible jam that I could imagine from any possible fruit that exists. Whatever my mom could find…she WILL make marmalade out of it…pack it…and send it to London.

    So why not break down the recipe from my mother’s marmalade. I don’t think its anything that most of the people don’t know but it was and still is a basic thing of my Menu…

    As i found out, one really important ingredient in the process is of making a really good jam is pectin sugar. That ingredient is essentially what holds all of the fruit juices together.

    Pectin is a naturally occurring substance (a polyscaccaride) found in many fruits.  When heated together with sugar, it causes a thickening which is exactly what we want in this case. Obviously, this is not the traditional way that our grandmothers were used to but unless you want to spend some hours  in front of the pot you are better off using that.  Plus it is absolutely natural.

    INGREDIENTS FOR HOME MADE MARMELADE

    • 1 kilo of fruits of your choices (example apples)
    • 500gr of sugar
    • 1 envelop of pictin sugar.

    So, you need to take a 1/2 kilo of sugar, add the pictin sugar, mix them .  Add the apples in a pot together with couple of glasses of water so they start to boil.  If they were strawberries, you wouldnt need to add water as they are generally a juice fruit and will release there own.

    Boil them for 3-5 minutes …or in general until they start to soften up.

    Add the mix of sugar and continue to boil them.  and as they dont have any juice you may need to add 1-2 glasses of water.

    Boil them to medium-low heat until the marmalade becomes sticky.

    You should from before have ready some glass vases where you would store your jam.  You need to have cleaned them and  put them in the oven in really low heat for 15 -20 minutes to sterilize.

    Add the jam in there and keep it refrigerated!

     

     

  • My Mothers Isli recipe

    My Mothers Isli recipe

    Going back home for Christmas is something that is always a little bit of ritual. Like every celebration there are some things you need to do or expect from some. Like you expect to get some gifts or give some gifts or even eat a turkey or pork if you are in Greece. That is what i was expecting every time i was going back home…a lot of food and my mothers traditional isli desserts.

    Well, isli is a dessert that Greeks cook it during Christmas and has its roots from Turkey and far far before…  I am not so sure about the history to be honest but i do have learned that in Turkish  it means “that is worked”, basically meaning that is all worked with your hands as you need to do it to make it.

    Exhibit A your honour! The encrypted recipe!

    My mother is pretty well know in the family for making really tasty isli’s and rumours says many people ask her advice on how to cook them.

    Last christmas when i was in Greece i managed to write down the recipe from my mother with the purpose to get it out to the public…. And so i did it . Sorry mom, the secret is out!


    Ingredients for Isli Recipe

    For the dough

    1. 400gr of herbal butter
    2. 1 glass of orange juice (200gr) diluted with a bit of water
    3. 100gr of sugar
    4. Zest from orange
    5. 700gr  of  flour

    For the Sirop

    1. 400gr of Sugar
    2. 200gr of water
    3. 1/2 lemon juice + 1 lemon peel
    For the stuffing
    1. 250gr of walnuts
    2. 2 spoons of sugar
    3. Cloves
    4. Cinnamon
    5. 1 spoon orange zest

    How you Cook Isli cookies

    Take a pot and in medium heat add the butter and melt it. Add sugar and stir it with a spoon until it is half melted.

    Transfer everything to a deep bowl and add the orange juice with a bit of water.  Now its time to add our orange zest and stir with our hands. Lastly we add the flour and we stir everything with our hands creating our dough.

    For the stuffing we take the walnuts and break them in the multi taking care though not to “melt” them, adding the rest of our ingredients and mixing them up properly.

    isli
    isli sent from my mother…all the way from Greece

    Take a bit from the dough and create a small ball…now here comes the important thing.  At a moment when she was too tired my mother told me that in order to get this beautiful size on all of them she weighs each bit of dough to be exactly 45gr.

    Place it on your hand and open it up in a circle. Place one spoon from the stuffing and close it creating a small triangle. Turn it around so the seams are underneath and with a tweezers you pinch them to create the decoration on top. You can improvise..

    Place them in the oven for 25 minutes at 170c and leave them until they become red around. That is necessary so they don’t get soft when you pour the sirop on top.

    When they become red-brownish on top you remove them from the oven and you leave them on the side to cool down. Now its time to prepare the sirop.

    Add the water, sugar and the lemon in a small  pot and boil them in medium heat for 5 to 7 minutes. If the sirop thickens then add a bit of water to dilute and wait until you get the first boil.

    Pour the sirop on top of the isli and …enjoy!

    isli
    Traditional Greek Isli cookies for Christmas