Kourampiedes : Greek Christmas butter cookies recipe

In Greece if the house does not has the smell of fresh butter with icing sugar from Kourabie or the cinnamon, honey and orange from Melomakarona, it is not Christmas!

The eternal Christmas dilemma in every Greek family is either to choose kourabie or melomakarona? I will say both! So different from each other, but both share the feeling of nostalgia and memories of our childhood, only by their smell and additionally by their delicious taste!

Experiment, have fun, bake, and let the magic of the holidays take you!

Kourabies is a dessert made at Christmas. It got its name from the Persian word qurabiye, which means cookie. A sweet made of sugar, flour and butter, so simple but so delicious.

So here is a simple and easy recipe, let’s make our houses smell like fresh butter and spread some Christmas magic… and do not forget that the most beautiful memory is their smell!

150 gr. unpeeled almonds

250 gr. sheep and goat butter (prefer melted butter in the glass jar)

50 gr. butter lurpak or Olympus

½ Mr. baking powder

Two vanilla

100 gr. powdered sugar (for the mixture but you will also need for sprinkling)

2 tbsp. cognac

600 gr. flour for all uses

First, spread the almonds in a greased pan and bake them in a preheated oven on the heating elements for a quarter until they are roasted. Leave them aside to cool well and then break them into small pieces, putting them in a mortar! If you put them in the blender, do not beat them hard or for an hour because we want them coarsely chopped and not in powder form!

Then place the butter in the mixer (as are both butters from the fridge, do NOT thaw and do NOT leave at room temperature) and the icing sugar and beat at high speed. The big secret at this point is to beat this mixture for as long as possible. The more we hit it, the more our kourabies will be fluffy! Therefore for 25 minutes to half an hour we beat at maximum speed!

After beating very well, reduce the speed in the mixer and add the vanilla, the baking powder, the flour and at the end add the brandy and the almonds.

We shape our chocolate cakes to the size we want and place them in our pan on a greased baking sheet.

Bake in a preheated oven at 170 degrees Celsius for 25 to 30 minutes (it depends on our oven and the size we made them)!

After baking, leave to cool for a long time. We never add icing to hot chocolate chip cookies because they will make you sugary. I prefer to bake them at night, so that they cool down all night and throw the icing in the morning!

Place them on a plate one on top of the other and snow as much powder as we want!

If we do not consume them immediately, we store them in a taper or in a tin box in which they are kept for a long time!

Merry Christmas to all and I always wish your house smells of wonderful sweets!

Good luck!