Diples (??????) meaning fold in Greek, is a typical deep fried festive dessert, around Christmas period.
In Crete it is called (??????????) kserotigana~dry fried. Different from Greece, these fried pastry ribbons generally made for weddings and 6th of January in Crete.
The very similar dessert, which is called chiacchiere can be found in Italy, during the Carnival time.
Diples usually has the shape of a roll, sometimes a bow, made of a thin sheet dough, drizzled with honey syrup and garnished with chopped walnuts.
- 2 eggs
- 3 cups of flour
- 1/4 cup Rakı or Ouzo
- 3 T lemon juice
- 3 T extra virgin olive oil
- 1 t sugar
- a pinch of salt
- olive oil for frying
In a bowl, beat the eggs with sugar for about 10 minutes.
Add liquour (Rakı) and olive oil and mix well. Add lemon juice until incorporated.
Add flour and mix with your hands. Knead until you get a smooth dough.
Cover with a plastic wrap and let it rest for one hour.
Put the dough in a floured surface. At his point you can use your pasta machine or using a rolling pin,
roll out the dough into thin rectangle pieces of approx.15×25 cm.
Heat the oil in a deep frying pan.
You will need two forks to fold the sheet of dough to make a rolled diples.
Place the dough rectangles into the heated oil carefully. Fold it three times very quickly to form a rolled film.
Remove as soon as it has light yellow colour.
Place on a paper towel lined tray to drain. Repeat the same for the rest.
for the syrup:
- 2 cup sugar
- 2 cup water
- 3/4 cup honey
- 1/2 lemon juice
- 1 cinnamon stick
In a pot, put sugar,cinnamon stick and water, bring to boil. Add honey and boil about 5- 10 minutes. Before taking froim heat, put the lemon juice.
Remove the cinnamon stick.
Place the diples on a serving platter.
Dip with syrup.
to garnish:
- coarsely chopped walnuts
- sesame seeds (optional)
Sprinkle with ground walnuts and sesame seeds.
Don’t forget to share diples with your friends and family!
