‘Kourampies’ is a typical Greek Christmas dessert made with butter, almonds, flour and powder sugar. It’s a lovely cookie with excellent aroma that you will encounter in every house during December. Being in Netherlands almost the whole month of December, I wanted to get some of this ‘home’ feeling so even though I know I will eat lots of those in Greece I couldn’t resist and baked some already..It’s an extremely easy recipe, if you love buttery cookies it will be a nice surprise, give it a shot! 

the recipe

ingredients

(for 45 pieces – 2 kilos)

• 1 lurpak butter (or other animal fat) in room temperature
• 100gr. butter (vegetable based)
• 100ml. sunflower oil
• 70gr. powder sugar
• 40ml. cognac
• 820gr. flour
• 1 baking powder (8gr.)
• 25gr. vanilla powder
• 150γgr. chopped pre baked almonds
• some rose water
• powder sugar mixed with 16r. vanilla powder for sprinkling in the end

directions

• Preheat the oven at 140 degrees C using air mode.
• Beat all butters and oil for about 10′, so that the get fluffy and ‘white’.
• Add the sugar and the cognac and continue beating.
• Add little by little the flour. After adding half of it, add the baking powder and the vanilla powder and mix.
• Continue with the almonds and mix well.
• At this point you can mix with your hands in order to have better control of the softness of the dough. Add the rest of the flour again slowly and keep kneading. We want a rather soft dough that doesn’t stick to our hands.
• When the dough is ready, you get a small portion each time (40gr.) and shape it with your hands in small balls (size of mandarins). Place the balls in a pan covered with baking paper and bake for 25′-30′ until they get a really light blond color. You’ll realize that twill baking they get ‘wrinkled’ but don’t worry, that’s a success sign!
• When you take them out of the oven, sprinkle with some rose water and with the mixture of powder sugar plus vanilla and..

Enjoy!

Tips!

• To pre bake the almonds: cut them with a knife in small pieces and bake them for 3′-4′ at 160 degrees C in preheated oven.
• Rose water could be tricky to get so you can replace it with cognac or liquid vanilla extract. In both case cognac/vanilla extract should be diluted in some water.
• You can skip the almonds and have a more sugar-buttery taste..!