When you think about koulourakia, do you think about little crispy, buttery, light cookies that go perfectly with a cup of tea? Maybe it occurs to you that koulourakia are typically not a fasting food? But, today, they are completely NISTISIMA (Lenten). How is this possible? We found a recipe for Lenten Koulourakia that we are thrilled to make! Surprisingly, this is easy and made with just a few ingredients.
From Tessa Kiros' book Food From Many Greek Kitchens , we read the recipe ingredients and directions several times, each time thinking that something must be missing from this page. Now, you have to understand that we have used this cookbook dozens of times, and we have never found ingredients missing from the recipes, but there could be a first time for everything. We also checked a few other cookbooks to see if we could find a similar recipe. We did not find koulourakia made with tahini. We did find orange koulourakia, which are Lenten, and we found the traditional ones (non-Lenten), but never tahini koulourakia. That encouraged us to try this recipe as it was written to see how these would look and taste. Still convinced that several things were missing, we apprehensively gathered our few ingredients for this mini adventure in food.
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| Please note that because of the small amounts of each ingredient, we measured them before taking the picture of the packaging. On the front plate, going clockwise, honey at the top, baking soda, cinnamon, and ground cloves. |
For this recipe, you will need the following:
1/4 cup tahini
3 TBSP honey
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 TBSP brandy (Metaxa)
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp baking powder
approximately 2 cups flour
The directions seemed easy enough, since there were no fancy ingredients and not too many steps. Start by mixing the tahini with honey, cinnamon, cloves, and brandy. This will create a paste which seems too thick to be right, but then, add the water. The water thins out this paste, but leaves some lumps in the middle. That is fine since the lumps will get mixed in with the flour and will smooth out into the dough without too much effort.
After mixing the water into the tahini, set this aside. In a separate bowl, mix one cup of the flour with the baking powder. Make sure that the baking powder is well distributed through the flour.
Now, add the flour-baking powder mixture to the tahini mixture. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix just until the flour is moist. You are going to add a little more flour, so don't mix too much. This is the tricky part when the koulourakia can become flaky or they can become chewy and hard. You will mix more when you add more flour, but folding the flour into the mix seems to work well. This way, you have a little control over the amount of gluten created from the mixing process. If you have a real concern with this, use cake flour instead of all purpose.
Once the dough is formed, it is time to roll the koulourakia into the appropriate shapes. At this point, make sure to preheat your oven to 375º F (190º C).
The easiest way to make the koulourakia twisty shape is to roll out a small log, about four inches in length. Fold that log in half, crossing one end over the other. Pick up the bottom end and bring that back over the top piece, creating a twisted effect. You can twist this two or three times, depending on how long the original log was. Then, line up the twists on the parchment lined cookie sheet (or use a silicone baking sheet as we did). We also found it very easy to roll out long logs of dough in the same thickness, and then cut even lengths. This way we know our koulourakia will be the same size. We rolled out all our logs, then twisted all of them.
Once you fill the cookie tray with koulourakia, bake them for 10 to 20 minutes. This seems like a long time gap, but with a convection oven, the baking time is shorter than without convection. You need to keep an eye on them. Because the dough starts off as a more brownish colour, you might not see the brown colour from the baking as readily, so watch them closely. You will know they are done baking by the golden colour, and they will move freely on the parchment paper or baking sheet.
Once the koulourakia are done baking, allow them to cool on the cookie sheet. This should take about 10 minutes. Then, you can serve them warm with a cup of tea, or put them away to have them with your breakfast. Or, the best use is to share them with loved ones. They may be as surprised as we were with how delicious these are!
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Source of quote: http://orthodoxchurchquotes.com/tag/self-control/
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