Chinese Almond Cookies

These cookies are the traditional and easiest dessert to celebrate Chinese New Year, the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It does not have a fixed date, in 2022 it was February 1 and the celebrations lasted 15 days.
As familiar as its ingredients are to us, it is nevertheless one of the most popular Chinese Pastries. They are made in every home and everyone contributes with them to the Chinese New Year Table. They are very easy to make and complete in less than 30 minutes. It is even said that they bring good luck in the New Year!
Super simple and clean materials that you probably already have in your closet. They are crunchy and buttery with a small amount of almond or vanilla extract and definitely a favorite in the crowd, young and old. In ours I replaced the sugar with Stevia, you choose what you like.

Good & Lucky Chinese New Year in the Year of the Tiger!

work: 15′

time: 30′

very easy:

Easter Brioche Buns

Easter Brioche or Tsoureki Oriental in Greece is a traditional sweet bread, which is prepared throughout the year and especially during the Easter holidays. It needs yeast and good kneading to inflate and create beautiful fibers inside that will keep it fresh and fluffy for days. Also aromatic spices and citrus zest, such as lemon and orange, flavor it wonderfully. It is often decorated with red eggs and has different shapes and sizes.
This year we made small brioche buns to accompany our coffee for days.
Try them!
※※※※※We wish you Happy Easter 2021!※※※※※

work: 1h:00′

time: 4h:00′

medium:

Almond Pie-Birthday Cake

Cake with Almonds, syrupy and flavored with liqueur. Whitened & grated almonds make this almond pie very tasty. The syrup at the end (and in the right amount) flavors it wonderfully and makes it tender, soft and delicious.

We made it a Cake / Birthday Cake because… because we like it that way… and to simplify the procedures we sprinkled it with a little icing sugar. Alternatively we can put almond slivers on top or just grated almonds.

Yours!

work: 20′

time: 1h:00′

easy:

Fresh Apricot Clafoutis

It's apricot time and I'm happy. I really love these round, juicy fruits, with the color of the sunset and the velvety skin. Few other fruits, when ripe, have such a creamy texture and strong aroma that I like to smell them with deep breaths, as if I had to store it in my memory.
I realize that there are several apricot recipes on the blog which means I always put them first when it came time… If we share the same enthusiasm came the right recipe for this year, so you can enjoy them uniquely in a delicious Clafoutis.
Yours!

work: 20′

time: 1h:20′

easy:

Greek Brioche-Easter 2020

Our Easter Tsourekia of 2020 was a beautiful experience, although their process was time consuming. We kept great waiting times for a total of 5 inflatables and which time (and inflatables) worked positively and substantially to make them fluffy, with strings and delicious buns.
Their ingredients are the classic for Tsourekia of our Greek Easter Brioche in a more enhanced dose, since 1 kg of flour was required.
Despite the long process, the hand work was very little. The dough, a perfect dough in texture and aroma also gave a perfect final result, which justified the effort and noise of the thing… But it is these family Easter traditions that create inextricable links and tasteful memories that connect us as a family, as a Nation.

We wish you a Happy Easter, with a lot of strength, so that we can face an invisible enemy who changed our lives!

work: 1h:30′

time: 6h:00′

medium:

Amigthalota-Greek Almond Biscuits

A very easy dessert with minimal fats, without butter & with minimal ingredients. Almonds ground as the main ingredient and egg whites, beaten in a meringue. Flavored with mastic of Chios Island and cherry liqueur. Their top is decorated with almond flakes and a candied cherry to give them their color, to make them more attractive.
One of the best, traditional delicacies is the almond cookies. The shape, as well as their aromas, vary from place to place. Almonds biscuits are generally made from whitened ground almonds or marzipan, egg whites meringue, and sometimes even semolina. They have pear, rosette, small hill, ball, crescent, etc. shapes.
Sometimes they are sprinkled with powdered sugar and become pure white, and sometimes they remain with the roasted almond crumb visible. The most famous are probably those from the island of Andros, where there is a traditional local industry. The Almond Biscuits of Andros are flavored with rose water.
In all of the Dodecanese, the Cyclades & the islands of the Northeast Aegean, Almond Biscuits are a classic delicacy offered at weddings and engagements…
Yours!

work: 20′

time: 1h:00′

easy:

Traditional Greek Easter Bread-Tsoureki

If we close our eyes and think of Greek Easter, Orthodox Easter, the image to be formed in our mind is a delicious well done, braided super-soft, fluffy and moist brioche with a red egg. This is the view of our Greek Easter!
Sometimes easy with simple procedures and sometimes complicated and demanding the Tsoureki remains the favorite flavored sweet bread large and small. It has primacy in our Easter & Easter table with red eggs and bagels. Customs that blend and reconcile families and friends.
Yours!
Have a pleasant and enjoyable Easter of 2018!

work: 1h:00′

time: 4h:00′

medium:

Dates & Nuts Roll

An easy, simple and delicious sweet recipe for these rolls of dates and nuts, flavored with orange and cloves and sprinkled with grated pistachios. It is a healthy and tasty sweet, fat-free and sugar-free, but the dates give all the sweetness to these rolls, since they are already a sweet temptation.
Sweet rolls with dill and nuts have their origins in India where they are made and eaten a lot.
Yours!

work: 30′

time: 2h:30′

easy:

Vasilopita Brioche 2018

It is always an excellent idea to welcome the New Year with delicious homemade savory and sweet dishes. As for the more traditional sweet, Vassilopita, it can be made in various shapes and ingredients for all tastes. Everything is just as delicious and they belong to the Christmas period of Greece. Prepare your Vassilopita sweet or savory - because there is this version in many of our areas - and bake it to beautify the house "feast!". Regardless of the taste you prefer best, do not forget to hide a coin inside!
Vassilopita without coin is not done.
This beloved version of Vassilopita Tsoureki is an easy and light-to-mouth version of traditional brioche. Our own was made with the new olive oil from our own olives, which just arrived at our house from the olive press. He was kneaded in Vassilopita and the satisfaction was great.

Happy New Year 2018!
Health, Love, Happiness to Everyone

work: 45′

time: 4h:45′

difficult:

Homemade Energy Bars 4 Ingredients

This proposal for homemade snacks, Energy Bars -with nuts, almonds, peanuts, crisped rice cereal and maple syrup- is the basic recipe for something very simple and with the fewest possible components, only 4. We use only a mixing bowl and in less than 5' are ready.
It is Vegan, without processed sugar, gluten-free, without dairy or animal products, without fats or eggs. So healthy, so delicious, so crisp! The perfect snack or a delicious dessert with a highly sophisticated taste in a wonderful balance between salty and sweet.
I'm so excited to be back in the kitchen with you, making delicious and healthy homemade treats for us and our loved ones!
Yours!

work: 5′

time: 35′

very easy:

Raisin Buns

This raisin buns recipe is so fluffy, delicious and easy to follow (perfect for beginner bakers). Made with yeast, milk, flour, raisins, egg and sugar. Perfect for breakfast, brunch, afternoon tea or as a snack.
A homemade, delicious recipe for raisin buns with a mixer or without a mixer to make the most perfect snack. Everybody will love it at home, but certainly the younger ones. Delicious snacks, a convenient solution for our breakfast, but also for all hours. It is ideal to fill them with any filling we like, such as dulce, jam, butter & jam, sweet spoon even with a thin slice of cheese.
Yours!

work: 30′

time: 1h:30′

easy:

Traditional Greek Easter Bread

Round, Easter, traditional, fluffy cake light and aromatic. The only difficulty in that exercise is patience needed between different yeast rising phases. If we like doing braids straight or rounded to coil shape. With balls, as you suggest, it is easier and more relaxed and are ideal to fill them with chocolate or jam. Make your tests and you'll see, it is like to play, like children, plasticine. This is the grace of our Easter kneading.
Yours!

work: 30′

time: 3h:30′

medium:

Clementine Syrup Cake

Clementine syrup cake with tangerine-scented organic clementines, firm and very, very juicy. They give us plenty, sweet juice and zest of deep orange, with strong aromas of the essential oils. It is a syrupy fragrant and fluffy mandarin pie with pastry sheet crust not too thin, yogurt and semolina.
Yours!

work: 20′

time: 1h:00′

easy:

Greek New Year's Lucky Cake (Vasilopita) 2017

The 2017 I want to be lucky, be sweet like candy, be bright and colorful to making our mood and bring into our lives the best and most important of what we want. Furthermore a pie for Santa Claus to contain all or wish to contain with lots of icing for hope, sweet optimism raisins, blanched for health almonds, candied Orange Peels for prosperity, soft butter for tenderness and love, and of course, colorful bonbons for happiness!
Yours!

※※※※※Happy New Year 2017!※※※※※

work: 30′

time: 3h:30′

medium:

Kourabiedes: Greek Christmas Butter Cookies

The Kourabiethes are the best known, loved and popular sweets in various forms and names in all Central Europe, Austria, Germany, and in some Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
In Greece is the most favorite Christmas dessert and although at first glance the sugared biscuit, crescent, circular or a mouthful, seems to be a rather unspectacular goody -only a little powdered sugar sprinkled upon a biscuit- between all the colorful Christmas buttered sweet cookies, truffles or chocolate treats is a clear favorite. The flavor and texture to win: It is a unique combination of butter and nuts and there is also the fact that melt in your mouth and have lovely crisp texture with roasted almond inside.
Follow the steps of the recipe and enjoy the tastiest kourabiedes ever!
Yours!

work: 1h:00′

time: 2h:00′

middle:

Almond Tart

Almond Tart with orange aromas. With grated base dough -Pâte Sablée- kneaded with poppy seeds. The aromatic stuffing of the tart has two layers. A first, thin, with apricot jam and a second with almond cream, made with blanched ground almonds, butter, orange zest, cherry brandy, eggs and sprinkled in the surface with almond slivers.
Refined, delicate, light, almost ethereal flavors, that only almonds can give us.
Yours!

work: 1h:30′

time: 2h:30′

medium:

Rusks, Vanilla Pudding & Jelly Dessert

A light dessert straight from the kitchen of mama, with flavors almost baby and that many will remind a dessert of older years.
As simple as it is, however, parallel preparations will have to wait at the refrigerator to cool each layer separately.
Syrupy rusks, sprinkled with roasted almond filet, vanilla cream, crisp peach compote & a beautiful crimson plum jelly with flavored berries.
You will love the process but even more you will love the taste and aroma of this dessert with the first bite! Yours!

work: 1h:00′

time: 8h:00′

easy:

Grape Molasses Pudding with Sweet Red Wine-Moustalevria

Molasses is a thick syrup, which is made by boiling the grape must. Kept unchanged for a long time and with this we make various sweet dishes, jelly, must cookies etc. It can also be added as a unique addition to grilled on the oven to salads and other sweets.
The Moustalevria is a simple dessert that comes from our ancient past to sweeten our present. Added Mavrodafne for exhilarating touch and taste intensity.

It's a traditional Greek pastry, whose main ingredient is the grape must. Its roots date back jelly in ancient times where it was known as oinouta a name that survived into the Byzantine period along with other names such as moustopita and pastellos. In Crete, referred to as kefteria, in Samos as Kourkouta or treat the vintage while in Cyprus Palouzes. Ancient sweet, which enjoyed not only by Dionysus, but also by ordinary people. Moreover how could it be otherwise, when around the numerous vineyards cried the voices of the harvesters and presses the grapes become must and mutate into wine and its derivatives.
Yours!

work: 10′

time: 10′

very easy:

Orange Millefeuille

Each dish should tell a story, its own history in layered relationship and function of the time of preparation, choice of materials, the combination of flavors and of course the one who creates but also to those who will taste it. The Art of Cooking is an art and talent but almost innate or cultivated the passion that pushes higher goals, which hopes to reach…
Fifteen of August and the current dessert was chosen to be white, summer, airy like icing veil that surrounds it. Also to be able to offer our mild sweet tones and light flavors. It is a Mille Feuille with filo pastry biscuits and Orange Cream successive repetitive layers and culminating in a light cream whipped cream, sprinkled with roasted almonds and icing sugar.
Yours!

work: 20′

time: 40′

easy:

Balèzès, Traditional Dessert of Lesvos Island

This light dessert, flavored with rosewater, has the origin of Lesbos. This was making of my mother in law, who was from there.
From what she told me, it was given in women who had just given birth, to strengthen, in order to have enough milk to breastfeed their baby. This is because it is a starchy dessert with sugar and nuts. Therefore quite energizing and suitable for new mothers.
Cold from the fridge is a very refreshing cream. It comes instead of white almonds with fresh, raw pistachio or sprinkled with cinnamon.

work: 15′

time: 30′

very easy: