Galaktoboureko...Say What?

Galaktoboureko is the name of one of the desserts that I made today. The name is Greek and so hard to pronounce and smell that I was forced to copy and paste it into this blog every time you see it typed. It means milk pie in Greek but I like to call it pure delciousness. In terms of how you say it...in the kitchen today whenever someone, other than our chef who is Greek, said it, it came out like galabooourkiki-ekki-o. As far as I can tell you say it gala-ka-bourk-rio but don't quote me on it. It was a zen dessert to make and since I did it pretty much all by my lonesome, that's saying something.

To make it, you make a thick custard with vanilla, sugar, eggs, milk and semolina flour and then, using phyllo/filo dough, you place seven layers of the dough into the pan and then dump the custard in and then top with the rest of your package of phyllo/filo dough. You MUST cut it before it bakes or else the whole thing will crack if you try to cut it afterwards. Once it comes out of the oven, you pour a thick sugar syrup that has honey, cinnamon and lemon rind in it over the galaktoboureko and let it cool and let the syrup soak in before cutting it and tasting how wonderful it is.


Galaktoboureko fresh from the oven


Sugar soaked galaktoboureko waiting to be cut


Inside of the galaktoboureko -- see the layers of phyllo/filo and custard?!

We also used the puff pastry that we eluded to yesterday today. I have to say that it was a little bit of a downer for me because our group had to make a really easy and not that challenging of a task when others were making some pretty fun and tasty nibbles! The one fun thing that we did make with my puff dough was something called a palmier. The picture below will best describe it but basically, it is a type of cookie that is made by folding cinnamon-sugar coated puff pastry and then cutting it into 1-inch disks and baking it. Collin Murray found my palmier to be extremely tasty and I have agree with him that it was.


Pretty palmiers


Palmier beauty shot