Greek desserts are sweets made across Greece from nuts, honey, fruit, sesame and filo. The page opens with honey, pan-baked sweets and old recipes such as pasteli. It then turns to portokalopita, quince paste, the fanouropita of Saint Phanourios and revani. Four short answers cover kok, karydopita, tulumba and three island sweets. The wider table appears under Greek food, and tasting walks under Greece food tours. Outings of every other kind are gathered under Greece tours.
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What are Greek desserts?
Greek desserts are sweets built on a short list of staples: honey, nuts, sesame, fruits and filo pastry. Filo is a paper-thin dough that is laid in sheets and layers. Greek cooks put seeds and nuts into everything from pastry to main dishes.
For Greek desserts, honey comes chiefly from the nectar of fruit and citrus trees. Those citrus trees include lemon, orange and bigarade, or bitter orange. Bigarade is the French name for the bitter orange. Thyme honey and pine honey are two more Greek kinds. Nectar is the sugary liquid that flowers make to draw in bees.
Among Greek desserts, tiganites and pasteli both trace back to ancient Greece. Pasteli is a baked bar of sesame and honey. Tiganita, also called laggita, can be a thin Greek crêpe or a thicker, fluffier pancake. A crêpe is a very thin pancake from France. Sesame is a small, oily seed.
One family of Greek desserts goes by the name glyka tapsiou. The phrase covers pies and breads that go into the oven in baking pans. Galaktoboureko, amygdalopita and kadaifi all belong to this style. Amygdalopita is almond cake, made from ground almonds with flour, butter, eggs and pastry cream.
- Rodini: These small marzipan rolls wear a layer of whipped cream around a whole cherry.
- Kouvanezes: Syros makes these sponge cake rolls filled with chocolate cream.
- Mandola: The island of Corfu gives the Greek table this almond candy.
Strained yogurt with honey and walnuts also counts among Greek desserts. Strained yogurt is yogurt drained of its whey, which makes it thick. Halvadopita, or halva pie, is a nougat pie. Nougat is a chewy sweet of sugar or honey with nuts.
Why does portokalopita stand out among Greek desserts?
Greek desserts include portokalopita, a cake in which sweet orange is the main ingredient. Its name joins portokali, the Greek word for orange, and pita, here meaning cake. Pita is also the Greek word for a pie. The cake is very popular across Greece.
Within Greek desserts, portokalopita belongs to the siropiasta family. Siropiasta are sweets bathed in syrup, as baklava is. Syrup is sugar boiled in water until it thickens. The cake looks spongy, yet its dough is really dry shreds of filo. Filo is dough rolled into sheets as thin as paper.
On top, the finished cake is bathed in a syrup that has simmered with oranges. To simmer is to cook gently, just below the boil. Ideally, portokalopita waits a day or two before it is eaten. By then the syrup has fully soaked in, and every flavour has blended. To absorb is to soak up.
Orange is a staple of Greek cooking, Greek desserts included. The fruit grows in the south of the Peloponnese, above all in Laconia and Argolis. A staple is a basic food that a kitchen uses again and again. The Peloponnese is a broad peninsula in the south of the Greek mainland.
- Flavourings: Vanilla, cinnamon or both can scent the orange syrup on top.
- More orange country: Arta, in the north, and the island of Chios also grow oranges.
- Filo cousins: Galaktoboureko and patsavouropita are two more Greek pastries made with filo.
Among Greek desserts, portokalopita is a sweet to eat with coffee. A mix of Greek yogurt, egg and orange juice binds its filo shreds. Greek yogurt is thick yogurt strained of its watery whey. A good portokalopita feels fluffy and juicy, not dense.
How did quince paste find a place among Greek desserts?
Greek desserts list kydonopasto, a firm sweet made from the quince fruit. Quince paste is a sweet, tart and thick jelly of quince pulp. A quince is a hard, golden fruit related to the apple and pear. Pulp is the soft flesh of a fruit.
The quince came from Kydonia, a port of the Minoans. Minoan names a Bronze Age culture centred on Crete. Ancient Greeks grew quinces in great numbers. They made quince cheese and sweetened it with honey. Quince cheese is another name for quince paste. For Greek desserts, the recipe itself is held to be ancient in origin.
Apicius, a Roman cookbook, also tells how to stew quince in honey. Its recipes were gathered in the late 4th or early 5th century AD. To stew is to cook slowly in liquid. The English word marmalade goes back to the Greek melimelon. Melimelon means honey apple or sweet apple.
For Greek desserts like this, cooks peel and core the fruit, then cook the pulp with sugar. To core a fruit is to cut out its hard centre and seeds. A pressure cooker turns the paste light brick in colour. A regular pot and a long cooking time give a darker brick colour.
- Setting: Left for days in earthenware bowls, the paste grows firm enough to keep its shape.
- Taste: Its flavour is sweet but slightly astringent, meaning it leaves the mouth dry.
- Leftovers: Quince jelly uses the skins, cores and pips set aside when making the paste.
Quince paste, listed among Greek desserts, is sold in squares or blocks. Bakers also use it to stuff pastries. In consistency, flavour and use, it resembles guava cheese. Guava is a tropical fruit whose flesh is sweet and pink or white.
Which saint gives Greek desserts the fanouropita?
Greek desserts owe the fanouropita to Saint Phanourios, the patron saint of Rhodes. A patron saint is one believed to guard a place or a cause. The cake is a sweet from Greek cuisine, and people also call it the lost and found cake.
The cake is based on oil and holds no butter or eggs. That lets believers eat it on holy fasting days. Fasting days are times when the Orthodox Church asks people to avoid certain foods. Believers offer the cake in the hope of revelations about objects or people. A revelation is something hidden that becomes known.
Among Greek desserts, fanouropita is a round cake about 25 to 30 centimetres across. It is puffy, oily and aromatic. Sifted white sugar is sometimes dusted over the top. Aromatic means giving off a pleasant, strong smell. The recipe traditionally has seven, nine or eleven ingredients, depending on the region.
For Greek desserts of this kind, the core ingredients are flour, vegetable oil, sugar and orange juice. Baking powder, nuts and raisins complete the basic list. Cinnamon, cloves, soda and water can join them too. Without raisins and walnuts, the cake turns more crumbly, close to biscotti. Biscotti are hard, twice-baked Italian biscuits.
- Church: The cake is blessed in church, and its pieces are then handed out to people.
- His mother: It is offered for the forgiveness of the saint’s mother, a woman cruel to the poor.
- Requests: In Greece and Cyprus, believers ask the saint to reveal a job, a lost item or a groom.
The fanouropita custom of Greek desserts began around 1500 AD, or between 1355 and 1369 by another account. It began as a way to honour an icon of the saint. Icons are holy pictures on wood that Orthodox Christians honour.
What makes revani one of the syrup-soaked Greek desserts?
Greek desserts make room for revani, a sweet semolina cake soaked in syrup. Semolina is coarse flour ground from hard wheat. In Greek the name is written ρεβανί. Cooks bake the batter in a sheet pan and then sweeten it with sugar syrup.
The finished cake is cut into diamond shapes, also called lozenges, or into squares. A lozenge is a diamond with four equal sides. Outside Greek desserts, the same sweet goes by basbousa, harisa or nammoura. In Cypriot Greek, the sweet is called shamali. Cypriot Greek is the form of Greek spoken on Cyprus.
For Greek desserts, the chef Arto Der Haroutunian linked revani to the Byzantine Empire. He suggested the Byzantines made it popular in Anatolia and the Balkans. Anatolia makes up the Asian side of present-day Turkey. A similar recipe turns up in a 13th-century Arabic cookbook from Al-Andalus. Al-Andalus was Muslim-ruled medieval Spain and Portugal.
That book places the sweet in the lands around the city of Constantinople. Ottoman cooks whisked all the ingredients together until they turned frothy. Their revani held flour and plenty of eggs. Street sellers, by contrast, used semolina and fewer eggs, or none. Frothy means light and full of small bubbles.
- 1844 recipe: An Ottoman cookbook of 1844 bakes semolina, butter, sugar and eggs into revani.
- Sponge cake: A dictionary of 1890 by James Redhouse called rewani a kind of sponge cake.
- Şambali: This similar sweet of syrup, yogurt and semolina is popular in Greece and İzmir.
Behind the Greek desserts name revani lies a Turkish word, taken from the Persian for oil or butter. Another account, though, ties the name to Revan, the Turkish name for Yerevan. Yerevan is today the capital city of Armenia, in the Caucasus.
What do travellers ask about Greek desserts, and what are the answers?
Greek desserts fill the four questions below, which run from a cream-filled cake to island specialities. The first asks about kok, the second about karydopita, a walnut cake. The third covers tulumba, and the last turns to three island sweets.
What is kok, one of the cream-filled Greek desserts?
Kok is a Greek dessert close to a profiterole. A profiterole is a small ball of choux pastry filled with cream. Kok joins two pieces of sponge cake around pastry cream, then adds chocolate glaze and syrup. Nuts or flakes sometimes go on top. Kokakia is the plural, for more than one small kok.
What goes into karydopita, the walnut cake of Greek desserts?
Karydopita means walnut pie in Greek. It is a cake made mainly with walnuts and partly soaked in syrup. Cooks add orange zest, which is grated peel, plus cloves, brown sugar, spiced rum or cognac. Karydopita ranks among the commonest Greek pan-baked sweets. Cognac is a French brandy.
Where does the name tulumba come from, among Greek desserts?
Tulumba means pump in Ottoman Turkish, a word taken from the Italian tromba. In Greek the name is written τουλούμπα. The sweet starts as unleavened choux dough, piped through a star-shaped tip. Choux is a light dough that puffs up with steam as it cooks. Unleavened means made without yeast.
Which island sweets belong to Greek desserts?
Santorini makes melitinia from sweet cheese, sugar and eggs, with a hint of mastic. Mastic is a fragrant tree resin. Limnos rolls filo around nuts for samsades, then soaks them in syrup or honey. Corfu has sykomaida, a fig cake with dried figs, nuts, ouzo and spices. Ouzo is an anise-flavoured Greek spirit.