Home » Lucky Greek New Years Eve Cake (Vasilopita)

Lucky Greek New Years Eve Cake (Vasilopita)

Written by Published on Updated on June 2, 2019 in Uncategorized

 

Hello everyone!!! This is my first post of the year and I am very happy to be back here again with all of you. 🙂 New Years was nice, quiet we didn’t do anything special…Stayed home and relaxed while waiting for the New Year. It was raining most of the day, and into the evening so we decided to stay in and not walk around after 12 midnight like we usually do and watch the fireworks.

Did a lot of cooking and baking and I mean a lot of it!! and speaking of baking we made our traditional Greek New Years Cake (Vasilopita). My mom is usually the one who makes the cake each year, but we decided for 2018 that I would have the honor. 🙂 So, as you already know me I like to change things, so traditionally, this cake recipe is not the traditional Greek one but a recipe from Smyrni, plus the texture of this cake has a slight very slight bread feel to it but it’s cake, I changed it up a bit by not adding the traditional powdered sugar as a topping, instead I used dark & white chocolate and it turned out great!

The cake is usually cut with the turn of the New Year, so once we have all hugged and kissed we sit at the table for the traditional cutting of the New Years Eve Cake (Vasilopita). The Vasilopita comes along with a surprise..we place a lucky coin into the cake after it is baked (covered with foil of course). If you find the lucky coin in your piece then you will have good luck all year, soooo this year I found the coin in my piece. hmmmmm!! Let’s see what happens!! 🙂

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

LUCKY GREEK NEW YEARS EVE CAKE (VASILOPITA)

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Ingredients
  

  • 5 Eggs
  • 3/4 cups Butter room temp
  • 2 cups Sugar
  • 1 shot Cognac
  • 5 cups All Purpose Flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Powder
  • 1 Orange Zest
  • Juice from Orange

Instructions
 

  • Separate egg yolks from egg whites. Add egg yolks and sugar into a large bowl and beat until fluffy for 5 minutes.
  • In a smaller bowl beat egg whites until it turns into a soft, fluffy meringue. Add into the egg yolk mix the cognac and orange juice continue beating. Add baking powder into flour and mix, slowly start to add into the batter a bit of flour and meringue until done.
  • Butter and flour a baking pan, and add the batter. Bake at 180 or until golden brown.
  • When the cake has baked set it aside to cool off.
  • Melt dark & chocolate in two separate sauté pans. Cover cake first with dark chocolate and then spread with Icing knife. Then dot white chocolate onto the cake and made a design you like.
  • I took the tip of a knife and started slowly spreading the white from one side of the cake to the other to get the design.

Tags

Welcome to a small corner of my Greek Heritage. Growing up in New York from Greek parents, was a challenge of its own...but the traditional food, tastes and aromas that my mother cooked always travelled me back to Greece. My mother is a wonderful cook, our house would always have that smell of home cooked food. I remember very clearly that we were only allowed fast food, once a week, that was a huge day for myself and my brother. Jumping up and down in the back car seat, laughing, just being kids. It is true that we all like to eat different foods, taste, smell, even try food that looks different than our regular meals at home and I think that is so natural. In my teens, I was not really into cooking, I enjoyed my magazines after school, listening to music, and just taking a breather. There were times that I would glance at some of my mom's recipes, more out of curiosity than to actually try to cook them. At that time I did not realise that cooking would become my passion one day. Slowly, I would start to look into my mom's recipes a bit more each day and I started to find it interesting as a hobby. Each month I would go into our neighborhood bookstore and pick up my monthly book, until one day I decided to stroll over into the cooking section. That summer was the first time I actually bought a cooking magazine....and I loved it. Cooking and baking started out as a hobby, but now after many years it is my passion. Exploring the cuisines, the spices, the oils, the scents, the variety of smells and tastes that exist. It was and still is an amazing journey without limits. So, come along with me on this adventure, and I hope you enjoy my recipes. Sophie

5 Comments

  1. Lisa@LismorePaper
    January 4, 2019 at 10:51 am  ·  Reply

    This looks delicious and I love the tradition surrounding it. Good luck for you all year long! 💗

  2. Orvillewrong
    January 4, 2019 at 11:06 pm  ·  Reply

    It looks very tempting!

  3. Megala
    January 9, 2019 at 4:20 pm  ·  Reply

    Wow! This looks gorgeous!! Nice that you found the coin in your piece, 2019 is going to be a fantastic year for you. 🙂

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