Tikotiko Christmas sweets: Melomakarona!

Here is a treat that is accustomed in Greece during Christmas and is really tasteful, not so difficult - only tricky in some points, and can be eaten by vegetarians as well, as there is no dairy ingredient in them! Of course there is sugar, but if you consider that you actually put only 3 glasses of sugar for 150 pieces of melomakarona, then, ok, it’s a small sin!

I think that baking melomakarona is a nice way to get into the Christmas mood, as they have very nice scents which pervade the house.

Ingredients for the cookies dough: 1 glass of olive oil, 1 glass of coconut oil, 1 tbsp of cinnamon, 1 tbsp of carnation, 1 orange zest, 1 glass of sugar, 1 small cup of brandy, 1 small tbsp of baking powder, 1 glass of fanta orange juice with carbonation, all purpose flour (as much necessary, circa 1kgr). These ingredients produce about 130-150 pieces

Ingredients for the syrup: 2 glasses of sugar, 1 glass of water, 1 cinnamon stick, skin of 1 orange, 1-2 tbsp of honey. Ground walnuts for the decoration

In a deep bowl: You mix the baking powder in the fanta orange juice, you add the oils, the cinnamon, the carnation, the orange zest, the brandy. Little by little you add the flour and mix with your hands until it becomes a nice mixture.

I preheat the oven in 170C. I shape small cookies with my hands and place them on a tray, the one next to the other, but leaving some space in between.

I filled in 5 trays. I baked them in 150C in the pre-heated oven for about 15-17’ each tray. This is the first tricky point. You need them to be done, but not to burn them, so you have to keep an eye on them!

I let the cookies cool down and prepare the syrup. I add all my syrup ingredients in a pot, and let them boil and become a uniform syrup. You remove the syrup from the fire, skim the syrup and take away the cinnamon stick and the skin of the orange.

You soak the cookies in the syrup for about a minute; few cookies each time. You want the syrup to be hot and the cookie to be in room temperature. This is the second tricky point. You want them to have syrup but not too much as you don’t want them to dissolve.

You spread them in a nice serving dish and sprinkle them with walnut crumbs.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!