Traditional Greek honey biscuits melomakarona scored first on this year’s Taste Atlas list for the best tasting European Christmas sweets.
The popular Greek sweet, whose recipe dates back to ancient Greece, shares the top spot with baklava, which Taste Atlas attributes to Albania – despite the existing controversy for the sweet’s origin between Greece and Turkey.
Melomakarona and baklava enjoy a 4.4/5 score either.
But there is also a second traditional Greek sweet listed among Europe’s favorite Christmas sweets; the less famous karydopita cake, which is, however, not exclusively a seasonal treat.
The latter scored 3.8/5.
Healthy Greek Christmas sweets
Both melomakarona and karydopita -whose name derives from the Greek word for walnuts- are some the healthiest sweet Christmas treats one could find as they are made with few and simple ingredients.
Melomakarona are made with olive oil, flour, honey, walnuts and spices like orange or citrus zest and cinnamon. Besides this classic recipe, modern bakeries have created different variations in recent years, such as melomakarona with cocoa or forest fruit flavor in the riskiest twist yet.
The slightly syrupy karydopita, on the other hand, is a sponge cake made with eggs, sugar, milk, flour, and several more spices than melomakarona. Brandy or cognac can also be added to the recipe for extra flavor anf aroma.
Greece’s other most cherished Christmas cookie, kourabies, was surprisingly missing from Taste Atlas’ European sweet treats map this year.
Among the Greeks, the butter- and sugar-rich kourabies has been in an eternal battle with melomakarono for the crown of favorite Greek Christmas sweet.
Greek cuisine named world’s best
Earlier this year, Greek cuisine was ranked first among the “100 Best Cuisines In The World” as named by Taste Atlas Awards.
It outshined favorites such as Italy and Spain.
With a score of 4.6 out of 5, Greece beat Italy, which ranked 2nd (4.59/5), followed by Mexico (4.52/5) and Spain (4.5/5). This new ranking is a big boost for Greece, which was listed third at the 2023/2024 Taste Atlas Awards, with Italy and Japan taking up the first and second spots respectively.
Ratings showed that Greek cuisine is most loved in the Netherlands (4.7/5), Germany (4.5/5), the United States of America (4.4/5) and Spain (4.3/5).
In yet another recent ranking surprise, Greek Freddo coffee overtook Italian Cappuccino in a in the list of world’s best coffees.
Taste Atlas food rankings are based on the ratings of the Taste Atlas audience, with a series of mechanisms that recognize real users and that ignore bot, nationalist or local patriotic ratings, and give additional value to the ratings of users that the system recognizes as knowledgeable.
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