Sticky and sweet

The aroma wafting through our house today is not the smell of stale ashes and wood smoke but the tempting, delicious scent of rosewater, cinnamon, oranges and cloves.

The traditonal greek Christmas sweets around here are kourabiethes and melomakarona. 

 Kourabiethes - 

light and crumbly almond biscuits, sprayed with rosewater and covered in powdered sugar (icing sugar)

Melomakarona -

made with oil, brandy, (koniak), orange juice, cinnamon and cloves.  These are dipped in a honey syrup and covered in crushed walnuts

Many little hands make light work

The two younger grandaughters came to help mix and shape the biscuits/cookies

The boys are no longer interested in domestic stuff

Oranges from our trees in the garden

The first batch of almond biscuits are rolled in icing sugar

And sampled

These exotika are popping up everywhere.  This one is a tealight holder.  Scandanavian culture is popular this year.  First we had hygge and now we have their exotika 

Melomakarona before and after

The ones on the tray at the bottom have just come out of the oven.  The first batch was a slight disaster.  They were left in the honey syrup too long and fell too pieces.  Can't give those away.  We'll have to eat them ourselves!  Only a 'few thousand' calories and a 'kilo' of sugar in each one

And a pile of kourabiethes

There is no sneak-eating of these little delights.  The icing sugar gets everywhere and if it doesn't just linger on the lips and chin, you'll find fine white dust sticking to your clothes.  Not easy to say 'no Mum, I didn't eat one, wasn't me'.

Small boys find great delight in holding them up and blowing powdered sugar all over your face.  Avoid 'boys' of all ages when in the firing line of fine-sugar coated sweets

For the Best of Christmases

Χριστογεννιατικα Γλυκα    Christmas 'Sweets'

Today's the day our granddaughters make the kourabiethes and melomakarona, for the 'good' of Christmas.  The boys are a stage beyond these 'childish games' and play with electronic toys instead. 

While each batch of cookies is baking however the five children make funny videos with their iphones (or are they ipods?  or something else?).   

First to be baked are the kourabiethes.  An almondy, buttery, rather fragile biscuit made also in Turkey and the Middle East.

Every Greek house will be baking or buying these irresistable biscuits covered in a thick layer of icing sugar.  The buttery taste is quite strong and at times you can tell the origin of the animal which provided the butter.  Lurpack only I say but traditional people much prefer sheeps butter. 

When they come out of the oven they are sprayed with rose water which gives the whole house an enticing, flowery aroma, then covered in sifted icing sugar

You can't eat one and pretend you didn't because you'll be covered in white dust from the sugar.  

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We always make plenty and give away plates of them to friends and neighbours

The second round of biscuits were melomakarouna or honey biscuits.  The girls made the mixture but the boys did come and roll one for the photo shot.

Melomakarouna are are made with orange juice, cinnamon and cloves and then dipped in honey syrup.

We have christmas plates piled high with each on the big table.  First to receive this year's sweets was Vaso, our neighbour who is still picking olives.  Everyone that steps into the house in the next few weeks will get one or both of these sweets pressed on them, from the telephone repair man to the sheep herd watching his flock over the road.

Talking of telephone repairs, we have just come back online after a very long 24 hour deprivation.  Other neighbours up the road are picking olives and trimming the trees as they go.  The chainsaw went through our telephone wire.  We got a very fast repair because we know the telephone man.  He also lent us his tall ladder to fix a glowing xmas star to the top of our roof.  

Neighbours way over the other side of the gulley were complaining because they couldn't see our xmas lights this year.  The outside lights are only at the front of the house, so now we have a glowing star to guide the flocks at night and  illuminate the long dark night.