More Christmas flavours…

by Anna and Thanos, Music School of Piraeus

for the e-twinning project 2014-2015

“Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you where you’re from”

At Christmas here in Greece we eat a lot of sweets…

Apart from melomakarona and diples, a very popular Christmas sweet is kourabiedes.

kourabiedes are Greek Christmas butter cookies.

They are soft and fluffy with a crunchy bite. They also have roasted almond (or pistachio) inside, butter flavour and layers of icing sugar.

If you haven’t tried kourabiedes, you are certainly missing out!

Kourabiedes recipe!This easy recipe will put you in a festive mood!

– 500 gr. fresh butter

– 1 cup of sugar

– 2 cups of roasted almonds

– orange zest

– 1 kilo of flour (approximately)

– powder sugar for topping

• Stir the butter with the sugar little by little

• Add the orange zest and the flour

• Add the almonds and shape the cookies

• Bake in 200o C for 20 minutes

• After the cookies are baked , powder them with icing sugar

The ultimate Christmas cookie!

And you can make them into any shape you want!

Christmas cakesIn Greece we have two different food traditions to celebrate the birth of Christ.

• The one is Vasilopita (St Basil’s pie), a kind of cake we eat on New Year’s Eve.

• The other is Christopsomo (Christ bread), a decorated bread we eat on Christmas Day.

The most popular is Vasilopita and every family cuts one and gives a piece to each member

Vasilopita

We put a coin wrapped in foil in it and whoever gets it, will be lucky in the new year !

Christopsomo

As you can see, it is elaborately decorated, especially when it is baked by professionals (see the one on the left)