The Holidays are very near! For us Greeks, this means that some of our favourite festive sweets/desserts will be available: Melomakarona, Diples and Kourabiedes. Our personal favorite is the Melomakarona (pronounced mel-low-ma-KA-row-na); melomakarona are beautiful honey, orange, clove and cinnamon syrup-drenched soft cookies that melt in your mouth.

It’s THE most popular Christmas & New Year dessert, and it’s present in almost every home here in Greece during the holidays.Many families follow the tradition of making their own melomakarona at home. It is quite easy to make them, plus this way you can make them just the way you want them adjusting the ingredients. You can also find melomakarona in almost every pastry shop/bakery in Greece, during the Holidays period.Being so popular, melomokarona (as also happens with many other Greek recipes), is a recipe with many many variations. All of them however, contain honey, cinnamon and cloves as main ingredients for the flavor. So: there are modernized versions of the recipe, which contain butter or eggs. There are versions with lemon juice/zest instead of orange (which is the usual fruit used for flavor), there are versions made without olive oil, other versions with caster sugar, others with baking powder, brandy etc. The list goes on and on.

In our post we will provide you with our own version for the recipe, which a more traditional one, as it doesn’t contain any eggs or butter. Melomakarona is supposed to be a dessert that’s suitable for those following the Orthodox Christian fasting (which doesn’t allow any dairy/animal products). So, this is a recipe that is also suitable for vegetarians, as most vegetarians consume honey.Now, picture this; your home is decorated for the Holidays; Perhaps some festive music is playing in the background. You are shaping the melomakarona from olive oil scented dough -if you have kids it’s a perfect way to introduce them to the kitchen AND create some beautiful memories at the same time- and your house is already filled with the aroma of the cinnamon, the cloves, the orange and the honey from the syrup; beautiful, healthy ingredients are all around your kitchen counter. Can you resist?

What are melomakarona made from? The dough is made with vegetable oil (a part of it MUST be olive oil to enhance the taste), flour, semolina, orange juice AND zest, baking soda, ground cinnamon and clove. As simple as that!The syrup is made with orange juice, some of its zest, water, sugar, cinnamon sticks, and whole cloves. The aroma is amazing. The only thing you should take into account when making melomakarona is this: if the syrup is hot, then you must dip the cookies in while in room temperature to absorb it. Most of the people (us included) do it the other way around; First you prepare the syrup, you let it chill (close to a window will help to do this faster), and then you make the cookies. As soon as you take them out of the oven you dip them in the cold syrup for a few seconds to soak. You can also make ahead the syrup the day before.The final touch in melomakarona, is drizzling them with juuuust a little more honey (use a small fork to achieve that) and sprinkling a little ground walnuts on top of each layer of cookies. Oh yes, there are layers! Most people put the melomakarona on top of each other forming a small pyramid/cone and cover it with some cling film. The form is reminiscent of the tip of a Christmas tree.