Koulourakia - Greek Easter Biscuits
Koulourakia are traditional Greek Easter cookies made with gingerbread yeast. Newer recipes use baking powder, baking soda or a combination of both instead of gingerbread yeast, but cannot be compared to those made with gingerbread yeast. The biscuits are extremely airy, crunchy and crispy, and all these characteristics will last much longer precisely because of the ginger yeast. Biscuits are usually shaped into braids, drills, boats or in the shape of the letter "S". I shaped them into bunny shapes and colored the dough in pastel colors. So the middle of the biscuits still retained the original shape of the drill and did not move much away from the original. In Greece, these cookies will be served with good Greek coffee.
Preparation steps
- Melt the gingerbread yeast first and it would be best to do it outside or next to an open window, as it has a strong ammonia smell in fact like when you dye your hair. In a larger bowl (because the yeast will foam) pour the yeast and pour over with hot milk, then mix until the foam disappears and there is liquid again. In another bowl, knead the flour, make a depression in the middle, then add all the other ingredients except the color, but including the yeast, and knead a soft dough. Divide the dough into four parts and each color in the desired shade.
- From the dough, tear off pieces the size of 1.1 / 2 tablespoons, then roll them into a thin roll 30 cm long. Place the ends of the rolls next to each other, then twist them 2 times in the middle so that you will get a circle in the lower part, and arrange the ends at the upper part at will so that they look like ears. Organize a small piece of dough and roll it into a ball that you will roll into small sugar beads, then place that ball in the middle of the lower part to simulate a tail.
- Transfer the shaped bunnies to a baking sheet lined with baking paper, then bake them in a preheated oven at 170 degrees for 8 minutes, rotate the baking tray, then continue to bake the biscuits for another 4 minutes. Transfer the baked biscuits to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.
- In the meantime, make the glaze by mixing sugar and water, the glaze should be thin. Apply the icing over the entire biscuit with a kitchen brush, then leave them on the rack to compress the icing. Once the icing has set, transfer the biscuits to a box with a tight lid and store for up to a month at room temperature.
