Melomakarona: Greek Christmas Honey Cookies

Melomakarona are soft Greek cookies made with olive oil, orange and semolina, dipped in honey syrup and topped with walnuts. They are the classic Christmas sweet in Greek homes. The dough is made without butter or eggs.

Serves: about 30 cookies | Prep: 40 min | Cook: 25 min plus syrup and cooling

Ingredients

  • 200 ml olive oil
  • 100 g sugar
  • 150 ml orange juice
  • Zest of 2 oranges
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp ground cloves
  • 200 g fine semolina
  • About 400 g plain flour
  • For the syrup: 300 g honey, 200 g sugar, 400 ml water, 1 cinnamon stick, 1 strip of orange peel
  • 100 g walnuts, finely chopped, to finish

Method

  1. Whisk the olive oil with the sugar, orange juice and zest. Stir in the baking soda until it foams.
  2. Mix the semolina, 300 g of the flour, baking powder and spices and stir them in.
  3. Add the remaining flour bit by bit until you have a soft dough that does not stick. Handle it as little as possible.
  4. Heat the oven to 180°C. Shape the dough into ovals of about 40 g and press lightly with a fork.
  5. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden and let them cool.
  6. Simmer the syrup ingredients for 5 minutes. Dip the cookies in the hot syrup for 15 to 20 seconds, let them drain and sprinkle with walnuts.

Tips

  • Too much kneading makes the cookies hard. Stop when the dough just holds together.
  • Dip cooled cookies in hot syrup, never the reverse, or they fall apart.
  • They keep for a week in a tin and taste better on the second day.

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Photo: Kalambaki2 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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