SOFT & CHEWY MOUSTOKOULOURA
GREEK GRAPE MOLASSES COOKIES

One of the most traditional greek cookies. A soft and big cookie based on grape molasses, syrup coming from grapes.

Its flavor is sweet with a hint of spice and its aroma is pungent, heady and so incredibly tempting. Petimezi is used regularly in Greek cuisine in savory dishes—its nectarous flavor being used to enrich sauces.

The most common use of this dark-colored syrup though is for making different kinds of sweets like moustalevria, which is a grape-must pudding and moustokouloura, grape-must cookies.

Ingredients:

 
*1 Kg  all purpose flour

*1 cup ‘Petimezi’  grape molasses

*1 cup Olive oil + extra for brushing cookies

*½ cup Tsipouro *

*1/2 cup Orange Juice freshly squeezed

*1 tbsp ground cinnamon

*½ tbsp ground cloves

*1 tsp baking soda

*1 tsp baking powder

*1 tsp Orange Zest

Directions:

 
We sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl.
Put in another bowl the “petimezi”, orange juice, olive oil, the baking soda diluted in the “tsipouro”, the cinnamon, cloves, orange zest and stir to combine.
Gradually add the flour mixture and knead to combine into a soft dough. We may add accordingly some more flour or olive oil, to reach the desired outcome.
Preheat the oven at 170 C.

Cut small pieces of the dough and shape them into cookies. Place them onto a greased cookie sheet, making sure to leave some space between them, so as to not stick together while baking.

Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for about 15 min.
Remove cookies from the oven, allow them to cool. Store cookies in an airtight container .

NOTES: Tsipouro is a strong distilled spiritcontaining 40-45% alcohol by volume and is produced from the pomace (the residue of the wine press). It comes in two types: pure and anise-flavored.

*You can use Ouzo instead of tsipouro.