Honey Dipped Cookies
Submitted by clramge
Honey-dipped cookies, the Greek melomakarona, are oval spiced cookies fragrant with orange, cognac, and cinnamon, soaked in honey syrup and showered with walnuts. An irresistible Christmas tradition from the Aegean kitchen.
YIELD
1 batchPREP
20 minCOOK
30 minREADY
1 hrsMelomakarona: Greek Honey-Dipped Cookies
These honey-dipped cookies are the Greek classic known as melomakarona, star of every Christmas cookie tray from Athens to the diaspora. What makes them magical is the double bath: oven-baked until firm and dry, then plunged while still warm into a honey syrup scented with cinnamon. The cookies drink up the syrup like little sponges and emerge sticky-sweet on the outside, tender within.
There’s no butter here, which surprises first-time bakers. Olive or vegetable oil gives the dough its signature soft texture and keeps the cookies from turning rock-hard as they sit. The cognac and fresh orange juice provide both the lift and that unmistakable citrusy-boozy aroma.
The fork grooves on top aren’t decoration. They give the honey syrup extra surface area to cling to, so every bite picks up more of that dark, floral sweetness.
Pro Tips
- Cookies must be fully cooled before dunking; hot cookies fall apart in the syrup. The syrup should be hot when they go in.
- Scrape froth off the boiling honey syrup as it rises; that scum clouds the finished glaze.
- Sprinkle chopped walnuts and extra cinnamon over the cookies immediately after dipping while the honey is still tacky so the topping sticks.
- Store in a single layer in a sealed tin for up to two weeks; the syrup actually deepens the flavor over a few days.
Variations
- Use brandy or whiskey in place of cognac if that’s what you have.
- Swap walnuts for chopped pistachios or slivered almonds.
- Add a pinch of ground cloves and a splash of orange-blossom water to the syrup for extra Levantine warmth.
Ingredients
Directions
Beat the oil with the sugar for about ½ hr., add cognac. Add baking soda dissolved in orange juice; add orange rind; mix well.
Add flour and farina, and knead very well to blend all ingreds. into a med.-soft dough.
Shape the melomacaronia into mounded ovals, flat on the bottom, scrape the top lightly with a fork to make shallow grooves.
Place on a buttered cookie sheet and bake in preheated 250 F. oven for 20 to 30 min. Remove from the oven; cool.
While cookies are cooling, boil water, sugar, and honey together in a saucepan, removing the froth as it rises.
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