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Portokalopita | Cooking with Rania

Cooking with Rania: Portokalopita
Cooking with Rania: Portokalopita 03:57

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Rania Harris is wrapping up her Greek comfort food series with a dessert that might be hard to pronounce, but it's sure easy to eat!

Portokalopita

portokalopita-rania.png
(Photo Credit: KDKA)

Ingredients

  • 7 ounces Greek (full fat) yogurt
  • 1 ¼ cups vegetable or canola oil
  • 1 ¼ cups sugar
  • 1 ¼ cups freshly squeezed orange juice
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • Zest of 1 ½ oranges
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 15 ounces fresh phyllo dough
  • 4 medium eggs

Syrup:

  • 1 2/3 cups water
  • 1 2/3 cups sugar
  • Zest of 1 orange
  • 1 stick of cinnamon

Directions:

To begin this recipe, you must dry out the phyllo. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Open up your phyllo sheets, and one by one, scrunch them up, starting from the short side.  After scrunching a sheet, place it on a baking pan and continue until you have used the entire pack of phyllo.  You will need 2 baking sheets to accommodate all of your phyllo.  Bake in the middle and bottom racks of your oven for 10 minutes.  After the 10 minutes have passed, flip each phyllo sheet over and bake for an additional 8 minutes, this time altering the position of each baking tray (so the one which started in the middle goes to the bottom rack and vice versa). Turn off your oven and leave the phyllo in the oven. Keep the oven door open slightly (you can use oven mitt to do this) to further dry out the phyllo. Once completely dry use your hands to crumble the phyllo into small pieces, and set them aside.

For the orange syrup:

Pour into a pot the water, the sugar, the orange zest and a cinnamon stick and bring to the boil. Simmer for 5-10 minutes, until the sugar is dissolved and the syrup has thickened. Set aside to cool. The syrup must be completely cooled before pouring it over the cake.

For the cake batter:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Pour the vegetable  or canola oil into a large bowl, add the sugar and the eggs and whisk. Add the yogurt, the orange juice, the orange zest and the vanilla extract and whisk well, until the ingredients combine and the mixture is smooth. Add the baking powder, and whisk lightly.

Crumble the phyllo into small pieces using your hands. Add them gradually into the mixture while whisking so they don't stick to each other.

Using a baking pan spray, spray the bottom and side of 9" x 12" baking pan and pour in the cake batter.  Bake the cake for 40 – 50 minutes, until it golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean when testing through the center of the cake.

To finish the orange cake, ladle slowly the cold syrup over the hot cake. Allow each ladle of syrup to be absorbed, before ladling again.

Allow time for the syrup to be absorbed and put in the refrigerator. Greek orange cake is ideally served cold, not hot, so that it does not crumble. I usually serve this cake spoonful of vanilla ice cream

Serves: 12 - 15

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