Melomakarona EN

 

Melomakarona are my nephew Protagoras's favorite Christmas cookies who says (with reason) that we should make them all year round.

It is a very easy recipe, all we have to do is not knead the dough at all.

We have to mix the ingredients evenly.

Ingredients for about 55 small melomakarona:

Liquid ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil (1 cup = 240ml)

1/2 cup of corn or sunflower oil

Zest of 2 oranges

120ml orange juice

145g sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

Solid Ingredients:

600g all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

For the syrup:

345g honey

200g sugar

230g water

3/4 cup ground walnuts 

In a bowl, we mix the solid ingredients with a whisk.

In another bowl, beat the liquid ingredients to mix them well.

We pour the liquid ingredients into the solid ones and simply mix first with a wooden spoon and then by hand just enough to wet the flour, don't knead!

We spread the dough into an of approximately 1.5cm thick sheet. Cut with a small cookie cutter and place them on a large tray. I had to put some on another small tray.

With a fork make small shallow holes in the surface of the cookies.

Bake the cookies in a preheated oven at 175°C for 30' or until lightly browned.

While the cookies are cooking, we prepare the syrup:

Put all the ingredients in a small pot and heat them over medium-high heat until they boil (be careful because the syrup rises a lot). Low the heat to medium-low and boil for 4'.

Once the cookies have been taken out of the oven, if we had to bake some in another pan, we transfer them to the big one.

Pour the syrup to all the cookies. Let them cool and absorb most of the syrup and turn them carefully. Let them cool completely. I leave them like this all night!

Dip the melomakarona in the grated walnut and transfer them to a plate.