Diples: Greek Christmas Honey Pastries with Walnuts

Diples, Greek fried honey pastries sprinkled with cinnamon

Diples, from the Greek word for fold, are paper-thin sheets of dough fried briefly into rolls or bows, then dipped in warm honey syrup and covered with walnuts and cinnamon. In the Peloponnese no Christmas, New Year, wedding or baptism goes by without them, and on Crete a close relative goes by the name xerotigana.

They take some patience, but the dough is simple and a tray of crisp, honeyed diples disappears fast.

Serves: about 30 pieces | Prep: 45 min plus 30 min resting | Cook: 30 min

Ingredients

  • 4 eggs
  • Juice of ½ orange
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • A pinch of salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • About 350 g plain flour, plus extra for rolling
  • Sunflower oil or light olive oil, for frying (about 1 litre)
  • For the syrup: 300 g honey, 150 g sugar, 200 ml water, 1 cinnamon stick, a strip of orange peel
  • To finish: 150 g walnuts, finely chopped, and ground cinnamon

Method

  1. Beat the eggs with the orange juice, olive oil and salt until frothy. Mix the flour with the baking powder, add it gradually and knead to a smooth, soft dough that does not stick. Cover and rest for 30 minutes.
  2. For the syrup, bring the honey, sugar, water, cinnamon stick and orange peel to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Keep it warm.
  3. Divide the dough into four. Roll each piece out very thinly, about 1 mm, with a pasta machine or a rolling pin. Cut into strips of 4 by 25 cm, or into 8 cm squares.
  4. Heat the oil in a deep pan to 175°C. Lower in a strip and, as it puffs up, roll it around two forks into a loose roll. For bows, pinch the squares in the middle before they go into the oil. Fry for 30 to 40 seconds until pale golden and drain on kitchen paper.
  5. Dip the diples for a few seconds in the warm syrup, let them drain on a rack and sprinkle generously with walnuts and cinnamon.

Tips

  • The thinner the dough, the lighter and crispier the diples.
  • Fry one or two at a time and keep the oil at an even heat: if it is too hot, they brown before they puff.
  • Without syrup they keep for 2 weeks in an airtight tin. Add the syrup and nuts on the day you serve them.

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Photo: Richard Arthur Norton, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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