Kourabiedes are what comes out of every kitchen in Greece in December: round, slightly oval shortbread biscuits, packed with toasted almonds, baked with butter and brandy — and then buried under so much icing sugar that you can no longer see the biscuit underneath. Touch one and your fingers are white. Eat one and your lips are white. That is not a mistake, that is the recipe.
The name comes from the Turkish kurabiye and means nothing more than “biscuit”. In Greece they turn up at Christmas, at Easter and at every baptism, usually on the same tray as melomakarona — the first with honey and walnut, the second with butter and icing sugar. Together they are the Greek Christmas bake: one tray, two biscuits, and you take one of each.
30 to 35 pieces. 30 minutes of work, 17 minutes in the oven, plus an hour of cooling. The hardest part is not letting them brown.
| Amount | Ingredient |
|---|---|
| 250 g | Butter, soft (room temperature) |
| 100 g | Icing sugar, sifted |
| 2 tbsp | Brandy or Metaxa — or ouzo |
| 1 tsp | Vanilla sugar, or the seeds of half a vanilla pod |
| 1 tsp | Rose water (optional) |
| 350 g | Flour (type 405, plain flour), plus a little for shaping |
| 1 tsp | Baking powder |
| 1 pinch | Salt |
| 150 g | Whole almonds, toasted, roughly chopped |
| 300 g | Icing sugar, for dusting — yes, that much |
| optional | 1 pinch ground clove, or whole cloves for decoration |
The butter has to be soft. Not melted, not cold: if you can press a dent into it with your finger without it cracking, it is right. Cold butter will not take up the sugar, melted butter makes the dough greasy — and either one is the most common reason kourabiedes fail.
Spread the whole almonds on a baking tray and toast them at 160 °C for about 10 minutes, until they smell nutty and have taken on a little colour. Let them cool, then chop them roughly — do not grind them. Pieces of 3–4 mm are right: they should be noticeable when you bite, not turn into flour inside the dough.
Beat the butter with the sifted icing sugar in a food processor or with a hand mixer on medium for ten minutes, until the mixture is visibly paler, almost white, and looks like a soft cream. Ten minutes sounds long, but it is the most important step in the whole recipe: this is where the butter turns whiter and lighter, and it decides whether the biscuit melts on the tongue or grinds between your teeth.
Stir in the brandy, the vanilla and — if you have it — the rose water. The brandy is not only flavour: it brings moisture and helps the icing sugar cling later on.
Mix the flour with the baking powder and the salt and add it in two batches. Only until there is just no dry flour left to see. Anything more than that at this stage makes the dough tough. Fold in the almonds last, with a spatula.
Shape the dough into a log, wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Cold dough can be shaped; warm dough sticks to your hands and spreads in the oven.
With floured hands, take walnut-sized pieces, roll them into balls and press them slightly oval — the classic shape is that of a small egg, not a perfect ball. Some people flatten them like coins, some roll them into rings, some shape an “S”. All allowed. If you like, press a whole clove into the centre. Set the pieces 3 cm apart on a tray lined with parchment.
Top and bottom heat, 160 °C, middle shelf. Kourabiedes should not brown. They are done when the undersides have taken on the faintest colour and the dough is firm. The moment they colour on top, the oven was too hot and they will turn hard instead of crumbly. Better to take them out two minutes early than two minutes late.
Leave them on the tray for five minutes, then move them to a rack and let them cool completely. Only then dust them: on warm baking the icing sugar melts and forms a glassy layer that looks sorry for itself and sticks.
And then do it twice: a thick layer of icing sugar first, wait ten minutes, then the second one over the top. The first layer draws a little fat out of the surface and turns translucent, the second stays white. If you want, mist them very lightly with rose water or brandy beforehand so the sugar has something to hold on to.
Three things decide it, and all three are questions of temperature.
We sell olive oil, and yet this page says butter. That is deliberate: kourabiedes are one of the few Greek bakes that genuinely need butter. Their character is that of a shortbread — cold, crumbly, dissolving in the mouth — and that is exactly what olive oil cannot deliver. With olive oil the dough turns heavier and denser, and the icing sugar clings less well.
If you want to bake the Greek Christmas biscuits with olive oil, take the other ones: melomakarona are baked with olive oil, soaked in honey and scattered with walnut. That is the recipe that really needs our oil — and the reason both kinds always sit on the same tray.
For a kitchen where both get made, a robust oil is more practical than a mild one: the 1 litre bottle sees you through the whole Christmas baking season.
In a tin with paper between the layers they keep for two to three weeks — they actually get better with time, because they settle and turn more crumbly. Not in the fridge: there they go soft and pick up other smells.
Freezing works two ways. Unbaked: pre-freeze the shaped pieces on a tray, then bag them and keep for up to three months — bake from frozen, 3–4 minutes longer. Baked: freeze without the icing sugar, let them thaw and only then dust them.
Usually they were baked too long, or the oven was too hot, so they took colour on top. The second cause is too much flour: if the dough cracks and crumbles while you shape it, it has had too much. 350 g is the upper limit in this recipe.
Because the biscuits were still warm. They have to be completely cool — at least an hour. On warm baking the sugar melts and turns glassy.
You can, but the result is a different biscuit: denser, heavier, less crumbly. The Greek version with olive oil is melomakarona. Kourabiedes need butter.
Walnut-sized, 30 to 35 from one tray. The recipe doubles without any trouble — then bake two trays, not one thicker one.
Yes, and they are better for it. Best to bake them the day before but dust them only on the day you serve them — otherwise the sugar soaks in overnight and the white layer disappears.
