desserts recipes
Portokalópita (from “portokáli or orange and “pita” or cake) is a typical Greek cake whose main ingredient is sweet orange, dried shredded filo as well as yogurt, eggs, sugar and vegetable oil. It belongs to the family of desserts called “siropiasta”, which are sweets that are bathed...
Try to imagine a dense and moist cocoa, walnut and cinnamon cookie, wrapped in a layer of puff-pastry dough and then soaked in a sweet aromatic syrup, with hints of vanilla, citrus and cognac. This is my version of greek ROXAKIA ! My mother’s younger sister and thus my aunt, ANNA, who spent her younger years raising me when my parents...
Here’s a versatile cake recipe that I seem to be able to remember how to make without even looking at the written recipe, because the measurements are easy and I modify some ingredients each time, depending on what I have available. The cake shape never changes though and it’s always a “ciambellone”, which is the name of...
These spicy and aromatic Greek Christmas cookies, (sometimes loosely translated as honey macaroons but rather resembling a syrup-drenched Mediterranean version of gingerbread or a softer speculoos cookie, but without the ginger and with lots of orange), exist in as many variations as there are villages in Greece and cities around the world where...
Do you have any over-ripe and mushy bananas on your kitchen counter or already frozen solid in your freezer in the hope of using them one day soon ? Do you also have other tropical ingredients like pineapple, coconut, ginger, lime, cardamom and vanilla ? Perhaps it’s time to make a very tropical banana bread. And even...
A French-style apple cake is another example of simplified and humble perfection, because it’s like a pound cake (already perfect) with apples. This version uses equal weights but double the volume of apples to the batter to create a huge cake that keeps fresh for over one week in the fridge and is so moist and tasty that it can be...
The Orthodox Easter festivities this year are exactly one week after the Catholic and Protestant Easter holidays, so I thought I’d post a recipe for these cookies today, on this first Easter Monday, when most of you will be officially on holiday from work and school, instead of waiting until next weekend ! There are so many variations to...
A little crown-shaped yeasted brioche-like cake with a hole in the middle, that is baked then allowed to dry out and later soaked with a sweet aromatic syrup to which you add a strong alcohol and perhaps glaze it too so it could be shiny and then fill it up with pastry cream or just top it off with a flourish of whipped cream and then decorate it...
The chilly winter months (I feel like it’s freezing here and I don’t remember November being so cold in the past !) lend themselves to and actually encourage, denser, darker cakes filled with sweet dried fruits and a touch of alcohol of course, to better warm your bones ! Here’s a version with at least 7 varieties of...
Is “tiramisu” a dessert classic ? For my generation, perhaps not, since it only appeared and was most probably first prepared in the early 70’s in Italy, then was modified and reinterpreted over time until today, 50 years later, everywhere. This dessert is a simple assembly of repeated layers made of ladyfinger cookies,...
Poor little raisins, so often forgotten and considered much less interesting or fancier than other red or blue dried fruits. And yet, at home, we often had an after dinner ritual, instead of eating overly sweet desserts (which was rare in our home after dinner), we enjoyed eating freshly peeled or sliced fruits or the other option, which was to...
A spring version with floral notes and pink and red tones, for yet another variation of these soft amaretti cookies, to be prepared for the Easter (both Catholic and Orthodox) or Passover or Ramadan festivities this year. They’re still as easy to make with one part egg white + two parts sugar + three parts ground almond powder, with new...
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2 ALL !!! … with a multi-layered, multi-glazed puff-pastry creation, filled with a chestnut cream mixture and topped with a candied chestnut, but not for today of course but rather for the days around Epiphany coming up on January 6, which is when people most often enjoy a traditional “galette des rois” in...
Let’s prepare a Halloween version of this reinterpreted amaretti recipe together, but without the almonds. Once again, it’s still as easy as 1-2-3 but with 1 part egg white + 2 parts sugar + 3 parts ground peanut (not almond) powder and a few extras like cocoa powder, mini-chocolate chips and chopped roasted & salted...
A new & improved, easy summer dessert classic, with lemon of course and good quality olive oil, but also lime (for a more complex flavor) and buttermilk (for extra fluffiness and moistness), but you’ll have to work fast because of the reactive chemistry of the mixture but I’ll explain ! As you all know, this is one of the...