Koulourakia – Traditional Greek Easter Biscuits

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Koulourakia embodies the essence of Greek Easter tradition. Each year, I look forward to baking these buttery delights for my family. Perfumed with the flavours such as, orange and mastica (a very unique ingredient collected from the mastica trees as a resin found only on the island of Chios).

While traditionally enjoyed during Easter, these treats complement any coffee break throughout the year. Join me in my kitchen as we celebrate the joy of Greek cooking by baking our Easter Koulourakia together.

Recipe:
500g room temp unsalted butter
7 cups plain flour
4 eggs
2 cups caster sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
Zest of 3 oranges
1/2 tsp ground mastica

Egg wash: 1 egg plus and 2 tablespoons of milk or water whisked together.

Cream butter and sugar with your wooden spoon or stand mixer till nice and fluffy or pale in colour. Add the eggs one at a time, slowly whisking between each addition. Add 1 cup of flour into the butter, sugar, and egg mixture and incorporate well.

In a separate glass or bowl combine orange juice, zest, vanilla, baking powder and soda and stir well until it fizzes pouring it into your bowl.

Add the ground mastica to the remaining flour and mix it through then gradually adding it to the butter mixture. The dough will seem sticky in the bowl but is workable in your hands (you can add additional flour a tablespoon at a time like I have in the video).

Allow the dough to rest for 30 mins covered in glad wrap before creating different shapes.

Preheat your oven to 170C.
Use a heaped tablespoon of dough to roll out your shapes and once they have been formed, brush with egg wash and bake at 170C fan forced for approximately 20 minutes or until golden.

Note: be mindful of the thickness of your shapes. Thin koulourakia cook quicker.

Yield: approximately 40-50 Koulourakia depending on the shapes you create. Happy baking!

0:00 Koulourakia introduction
0:24 Creaming of butter and sugar
2:16 Flavour additions
4:26 Creating the perfect dough
5:37 Kneading and resting the dough
6:03 Creating different shapes
7:51 Koulourakia are ready

#koulourakia #greekfood #greek #easter #recipe #recipes

Greek Easter is fast approaching it’s my
favorite time of the year we’re baking
till all hours of the night our house is
perfumed with the best Aromas M Masa you
name it I’m going to show you how to
make my delicious Kaka for Easter it’s a
recipe I’ve been making since I can’t
even tell you when and I’m going to
share it with you
today starting off with The Buttery base
of guraka we’re going in with 500 G of
unsalted butter at room temperature we
need it as soft as possible so we can
whisk it so it’s nice and creamy and
along with that we’re going in with 2
cups of castor sugar attach our whisk
and we’re going to mix it until it’s
pale and
creamy nice and slow to start then we’ll
speed it up this will give us that
really buttery
texture speeding up now
and just to ensure all of that butter
and sugar get mixed together I’m going
to scrape the
sides that way we know most of that
sugar has dissolved into the butter all
around and we’ll continue for another 2
minutes so it’s been about 5 minutes now
and you can see just how pale and creamy
that butter is and sugar mixture is and
that’s going to give us the perfect
texture in our kakia just going to go in
and scrape those sides
again really soft and
velvety I’ve got four eggs here I’m just
going to crack them and then we’ll add
them one by one to our butter and sugar
mixture starting
slow oops two went
in last egg going in
so the eggs aren’t fully Incorporated
yet and that’s okay before I do that I
just want to add one cup of our flour
and this will help it maintain its
[Music]
creaminess going in with orange zest we
need the zest of three oranges oranges
are actually a traditional ingredient in
koraka so we’re going to add plenty of
orange that’ll make our Kaka nice and
fragrant so that’s our orange zest there
now we’re going to need the
juice of our oranges and we’re going to
need half a cup of orange
juice that’s our
juice just going to measure half a
cup perfect I’ve got 1 tbspoon of
vanilla bean
paste 1 tbspoon of baking powder
straight in and half a teaspoon of
baking soda now you need to be quick
here constantly mix so it can froth up
Bubble Up nice and then pour it straight
in to our mixture
here and now we’re going to continue
[Music]
whisking that’s perfect and all we have
left now is to add the remainder of our
flour cuz we did add one cup already now
we need to go in with the rest and add a
little bit of mastika my favorite little
ingredient to this recipe now I
absolutely love the addition of mastika
to muraka it’s not very traditional but
I love the way it works with the orange
zest so I’m going to pop a little bit of
these tears of mastika that come from
the resin from a special Tree on the
island of hios with a little bit of
sugar and just grind that up and add it
to my
flour so the mastika is now ground down
to a nice powder and I’m just going to
add that straight into the flour
just stirring that mytia through really
well into the flour and then we’ll
gradually add our flour into our mixture
popping this
down on a low speed We’ll add our flour
in keeping it on a low speed we don’t
want to make a
[Music]
mess so I’ve added all seven cups of
flour but I do think it could use a
little more just to make it more more
pliable when we work with it right now
it’s a little bit too wet I still want
it just a little bit more
workable so it’s best to use your
judgment here I’m just going to start
off with a tablespoon and see how that
goes let’s try a little
more it should be perfect
okay I’m really happy with that I don’t
think we need our dough hook attachment
we’re just going to take all of this
dough out put it onto our work surface
and we’ll give it a little knead and
then we’ll let it
[Music]
rest almost ready to rest the dough we
just need a flour our surface a little
bit remove the dough from our Bowl we
can work it a little bit and then we’ll
allow it to rest
[Music]
little bit of flour on top and we’re
just going to gently knead it just
gently kneading it we’re not working it
too
much just so it’s nice and smooth I’m
just going to grab a
bowl pop it in and let it rest for half
an hour then we’ll be able to create our
delicious gaka
[Music]
so our dough has been resting for about
30 minutes now and we’re ready to roll
out aqual laka all you need to do is
grab about a heap tablespoon amount of
the gaka mix roll it out really gently
one of my favorite shapes is to actually
spiral in both ends until they meet the
center and you have this beautiful shape
right here you can also do a ring which
is a traditional shape for Kaka that
you’ll find in most bakeries a simple
Circle
just like
that this neck shape is my favorite
especially for dunking into coffee roll
out your coil once again fold it in half
twist and then just bring those ends in
a little bit and you’ve got a nice
duning
[Music]
Kaki I G ready now and just before we
bake them I’m going to give them a
little bit of an egg wash it’s just one
egg whisked with a little bit of water
not too much and we’re just going to be
a little bit
generous that way they can have a little
bit of a glossy
[Music]
finish now we’re ready to bake pop them
in the oven for about 20 minutes or
until they’re nice and
golden and we’ll prepare our coffee
[Music]
our kak ready now and I’m so excited to
dig in I’ve got my Greek gaki ready to
go I just want to show you how beautiful
that crumb is on the inside side they’re
still a little bit warm which is how I
like it flavored with my stika and
orange I’m just going to dig right in
I’ve got my G you’re
ready you always have to
dip I can taste the mytia it works
really well with that orange zest and
orange juice that flavor combination is
just perfect with that buttery based
biscuit delicious G pasca
e
[Music]