2012 Cooking Club Week 12:Koulourakia, Traditional Greek Lenten Cookies

shinikins

These little Greek butter cookies, or Koulourakia(pronounced coo-loo-ra-KEY-ah) are traditionally made during Lent. I was lucky enough to first taste them a few years ago in my best friends house. Her fiancé grew up on Lemnos, and his mother, being a typical Greek Mama, sent her son a huge box of goodies, just in case he couldn't find food here in Ireland. In amongst the Greek coffee, Halva, Baklava, and cigarettes, was a massive bag of Koulourakia. Crisp, yet soft and sweet, perfect with coffee, I was hooked immediately and demanded the recipe.


Ingredients

2 1/4 cups of Flour(plain flour is best)
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 1/4 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 cup Sugar (Caster or Icing sugar is best)
1/2 cup Butter, softened
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 teaspoon Milk
1 egg

to glaze
1 egg yolk
1 Tablespoon Milk
2 Tablespoons Sesame Seeds

Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 5/375 degrees Fahrenheit/190 degrees Celsius.

Mix flour, salt and baking powder and set aside.

In a large bowl, use a whisk to beat the softened butter until light then add the sugar and cream until fluffy and light coloured.


Stir in the milk, vanilla, and egg. The mix will be fairly wet and creamy at this stage.


Add the flour mixture, a half cup at a time. Mix well each time you add the flour, you'll notice it becoming more stiff and solid. When you can no longer use a spoon to combine, it's ready for kneading by hand. Knead it in the bowl until it has combined and the sides of the bowl are clean.


Take about a teaspoon of dough, and and roll it in your hands for a minute to warm the butter content. It should be about the size of a walnut, and smooth.



Roll on the countertop until it's about 5 inches long. Loosely fold it in half, and twist, pinching the end together. The pastry may crack , but is so soft that it can easily be smoothed out.


If you prefer, roll each end in towards the middle to make an S shape. Place on a baking tray, brush with beaten egg and milk, and sprinkle some sesame seeds on top. If you find that the twists and curls are taking too much time, or prefer a simpler look, leave out the rolling and just flatten a ball of dough on the baking tray. Personally, I like the look of the S shapes(nothing to do with it being my initial ) and they are quicker to shape.


Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes or until a light golden colour. Enjoy with a cup of coffee!



The sesame seeds are the traditional topping, but they are lovely plain, with chopped pistachio's or almonds, or dipped in chocolate. They keep exceptionally well in an airtight container, and can be frozen and and eaten at a later date.

triseke

looks gorgeous!

sponge_bob

think i will bake a batch now:)

_blank_

Any chance of measurements in grams instead of cups?

shinikins

Sorry Des, I was given the recipe by my friend, she was used to using cup meausurements in Greece rather than grams. The best I can give you, after Googling is this

280g flour
100g sugar
120g butter

That's all approximate's though, If it's any help, I made these when I lived in Australia and had no proper baking measure, so used an ordinary cup out of the press, and they came out fine.

sponge_bob

sponge_bob wrote: »

think i will bake a batch now:)

quite nice actually, kids got stuck in aswell making various different shapes, and they loved them.

The Black Oil

Took a batch out of the oven a few minutes ago. Tasty. Will try with hot chocolate later.

Malari

If I don't get time to make these tonight, I'll be doing them at the weekend! I even have sesame seeds for authenticity :cool::D

Malari

And here they are:



I dipped some in dark chocolate too but didn't take pics before they were eaten, nom nom!

confusticated

shinikins wrote: »

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups of Flour(plain flour is best)
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 1/4 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 cup Sugar (Caster or Icing sugar is best)
1/2 cup Butter, softened
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 teaspoon Milk
1 egg

shinikins wrote: »

Sorry Des, I was given the recipe by my friend, she was used to using cup meausurements in Greece rather than grams. The best I can give you, after Googling is this

280g flour
100g sugar
120g butter

That's all approximate's though, If it's any help, I made these when I lived in Australia and had no proper baking measure, so used an ordinary cup out of the press, and they came out fine.

I made these last night, they're tasty, but not very soft like you described...I used the quantities you gave in grams but reading over it afterwards I wonder if that's where I went wrong - there's less sugar than butter in the grams, but twice as much sugar as butter in the cups quantities. Anyone else use the grams measurements and get kinda hard biscuits?

Malari

Nope, my biscuits were soft and I used the gram measurements. They're not really comparable anyway, as one set is by volume and one by weight.

confusticated

Yeah, but even looking at them after weighing it didn't look like the bowl of sugar was twice as full as the bowl of butter...they're pretty good anyhow, I might try them again with different quanitities, cup to gram varies on what website you're using it seems...cheers.

shinikins

The cookies shouldn't be very soft, the outside should be crisp but not crunchy right through. As I said, the original measurements were given to me in cups, and the gram measurements are approximated from a google search, so they may not be exact. I'm out right now, but I'll have another look this evening when I get home.

shinikins

Okay, had a look and if you want to go by Allrecipes.com, which I've always found pretty good for recalculating recipes, the cup measurements become

288g flour
128g sugar
113g butter

Not so far off the other gram measurements I gave. My partner's mother made some last night using the gram measurements I gave the other day, and her's turned out the same as my own. A forgiving recipe!

confusticated

Clearly I just did something weird! Cheers