Cypriot Flaouna

It is time for another Greek traditional recipe! For our category Culture, I will present you a Greek dessert called Cypriot Flaouna. Of course, you can eat this delicious sweet dessert around the year, but traditionally you eat Flaounes during easter holidays.

The best way to make is to do it as a group of friends or with family members. It also even makes more fun together with other people. The recipe of a Flaouna is quite simple, however, for the filling, you have to do it one day or 4-5 hours before doing the rest of the dessert because you still have to let the filling of the Flaouna rest in the fridge. So, the filling is able to soak all the spices inside of it. To avoid the dough becoming bread-like, you don’t overwork the flaouna dough. Anyway, enough for that, let’s finally start with the ingredients!

What you need for the dough:

• 500g of plain flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp Mahlab ground (fine powder)
• 1 tsp mastic ground (fine powder)
• 1 tsp of sugar
• 125g of melted butter
• 1 sachet bake yeast
• A little bit of salt
• 80ml warm milk
• 60ml warm water

What you need for the filling and glazing:

• 500g of Flaounas cheese
• 1/4 cup of semolina
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 1 tsp mahlab
• 1 tsp chopped fresh mint
• 120 g raisins
• 1 whisked egg
• 1/2 cups sesame seeds

At first, we will prepare the filling for the Flaouna. For that, we use our cheese and grating it to a thin texture. Afterwards, we add and mix the raisins, the mint, the mastic, mahlab, the semolina, and beaten eggs. Now we can cover it with a cloth and leave it in the fridge for the already mentioned time at least.

The next step is preparing the dough. We sift the flour, add the salt, mastic the mahlab, baking powder in a large bowl. While putting the ingredients in the bowl, we mix the texture thoroughly. For the mixture, we still need butter and eggs. Therefore, we add the ingredients to our mixture and mix the dough with our fingers.  

For dissolving the yeast, we just use warm water with sugar. Then, we flow the mixture into the dough and add warm milk into it as well. Finally, we can knead the dough to a nice and tight texture. In case the dough is too wet, you can just use a bit of flour. What we already did for the filing, we have to do the same for the dough mixture: covering it and leave it somewhere for 1-2 hours.

The dough will grow to almost double of size. During the time we can put the still missing mixture ingredients in the flouna filling. Then we mix the texture. After reaching the final time of the dough, we roll the dough out in thin sheets. But we still have to put the dough in the correct format. Therefore, we cut it into 12 by 12 cm rectangles. For the special taste, we use sesame seeds. We put the sesame seeds on a plate.

By putting the whisked egg on the outer side of the dough and pressing it down on the sesame seeds on the plate, the seeds will not fall from the dough. Now we form the cheese as a ball and put it in the center of the dough. Last but not least, we glaze the edges with whisked eggs and use your hands to form it to the flaouna shape. Do that on all the flaouna and put them on a baking tray for 45 minutes. Finally, we can bake it in your oven for 45 minutes.

Enjoy your Cypriot Flaouna!

Source: https://www.mygreekdish.com/recipe/traditional-cypriot-flaouna-recipe-flaounes/