Cake icing with natural food colours and flavours (Γλάσο με φυσικά χρώματα και φυσικές γεύσεις)

For my daughter's birthday, I made some cupcakes for her to take to school and share out to her classmates. To make them more festive, I decided to ice them, having gained some confidence since my first cake icing venture. With the help of some youtube videos, I got acquainted with the basics, which included vanilla frostings and food colourings.

After a few visits to a few supermarkets, I realised that I wasn't going to find any bottles containing food colourings - not at INKA (local level), nor Carrefour (multi-national) or Vasilopoulos (high-end). Not only that, but the only kind of ready icing sold was chocolate glaze. In Hania, you will be hard pressed to find royal icing and frosting. This says a lot about the society that I live in; I leave it to my readers to make their own assumptions. Greek zaharoplasteia, which I have often reprimanded on my blog for selling cakes made with fake cream, do not seem to use fake colours either: a quick look at their window displays reveals that, in general, they do not sell fake-coloured food. These may be added to made-to-order children's birthday cakes; μέτρον ἄριστον, as the Greeks say.

Left: a zaharoplasteio in Hania. Right: a zaharoplasteio in Athens. Apart from cherries and strawberry/cherry jam glazes, the colours of the sweets seem to represent natural food colours.

Most of the time, if not all the time, the food I prepare in my house does not lend itself well to the addition of artificial flavours and colours in order to create an impression. Most (again, if not all) of the time, my food, though simple and unpretentious, is highly aromatic and colourful, at any rate. This is the first year that I have felt 'obliged' to take a more liberal approach to food preparation. But it did not detract me from seeking out more natural approaches to icing cupcakes. And all because the artificial stuff simply doesn't exist on our supermarket shelves.

These artificial food colours from NZ have been sitting in my cupboard for a long time. The blue and green bottles are unopened. I keep them for sentimental reasons. Using a Martha Stewart recipe for frosting, I experimented with the red bottle to create some deep pink icing that would suit my daughter's Barbie interests. She really liked its look, but was hesitant about the taste. I can't blame her: the ingredients listed for each bottle state 'water', 'colour' and a number.

Another problem I found with making frosting is the high cost of butter in Hania. Forget the locally produced stuff; it smells like a sheep station (we don't have locally made cow's butter). Good quality butter is very expensive in a non-producing region like Crete. From experience, I've found that most recipes which call for butter can be made with olive oil instead. I decided to replace the butter with olive oil, which flows like water in our house. I don't expect my readers to take up this idea (unless they live in Crete or have ample supplies of olive oil). It did turn out to be successful though!

I started off by beating a mixture of olive oil and icing (confectioner's) sugar. The pale yellow mixture (I could not get a white colour) came out very smooth and glossy, able to hold stiff peaks - but it tasted of olive oil. I added some vanilla sugar to mask the taste, but that wasn't enough; the taste improved when I added a very small amount of peach jam (it did not affect the colour). By adding cocoa powder to the same mixture, I got a classic chocolate (ie brown) icing. 

The icing was easy to apply on a cupcake (the one above was made with frozen grated summer zucchini). It even gave good results when used in a piping tube. My main worry was that it would melt if left out at room temperature for a long time - but it didn't. The icing remained set, it did not run, it didn't go crusty in the fridge, and, above all, it tasted good.

The results of my experimentations with natural colours and flavours were all conducted during a test session with my children in my kitchen. They tasted everything and I adjusted the ingredients accordingly. My first test session looked into achieving good texture, while my second session looked into natural colourings, which necessitated adding the dimension of taste when I added natural ingredients.

 Brown (chocolate flavour with cocoa powder), dark pink (strawberry jam flavour with beetroot dye), creamy white (peach jam flavour) and light pink (dried crushed blueberry flavour - I was hoping for a blue-purple tinge, but this didn't work). You will see some olive oil floating on the top of some icings; as I added liquids to adjust colour and taste, I found that the oil began to separate from the mixture. This was able to be drained away completely and it did not affect the taste or texture of the icing. In fact, the removal of the excess oil improved both taste and texture.

The cream and brown coloured icing didn't present any problems, which encouraged me to continue with my experiments. The pink icing was achieved with a drop of strained beetroot liquid and some strawberry jam to mask the taste of the vegetables (strawberry jam alone was not enough to colour my frosting).

With the help of a piping set, my daughter decorated the beetroot-walnut-cocoa cupcakes above; my creations are below. My natural icing colours reminded me of the colours found in the sepia tones of old-fashioned photography. They were all able to be used with a piping tube, and they set without running.

For a white coloured icing, I made some simple glaze using icing sugar mixed with water, which I later discovered could be substituted with lemon juice for a tangy flavour. Orange juice also makes a tasty pale yellow-orange glaze, but don't expect a bright orange colour!

The finished cupcakes, to be taken to school in honour of my daughter's ninth birthday

Green is a difficult colour: would avocado (with lemon juice) work? How about nettles, which give a deep green colour? But what about the taste? Sometimes, it's just so much more convenient to use the easy option...



*I finally found a packet of food colours containing three vials of red, blue and yellow food colouring at a larger brnach of Carrefour at a cost of 2.40 euro.

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Breakfast cereal - Koliva (Δημητριακά - Κόλυβα)

Have you ever been served this for dessert in a Greek restaurant?

"Are you trying to be funny, Yianni?" I asked the chef at MAICh when he presented koliva for dessert recently. 

"Yes," he replied.

Most likely, you won't have had it in such an environment. Koliva are associated with death. In the Greek version of this dish, boiled wheat and nuts are shaped into a firm 'cake' which is covered in icing sugar, decorated in almonds and dragees (silver sugar balls) and 'cut' (more like smashed up) at the end of a memorial service for a dearly departed, as dictated by tradition in the Greek Orthodox (and other Christian Orthodox) church. It's very rare to see koliva served elsewhere aside from outside churches and at memorial services, hence my confused horror. While I was trying to enjoy my serving of koliva - it's also very hard to use the two words 'enjoy' and 'koliva' in collocation - it suddenly occurred to me that I had never made koliva myself, even though both my parents have died, which means that I have had a number of opportunities to eat koliva made for my very own dearly departed. These days, businesses specialising in the making of koliva deliver them to the church for you, which is how the koliva part of my parents' memorial services had been handled.

Nowadays, no-soaking-required, quick-boiling wheat is readily available, simplifying the work of the cook. Once the wheat is boiled till soft enough to chew easily (I let it cook for 45 minutes), it is strained and allowed to dry between two towels overnight. I placed the towels in the fridge to insure against spoilage.

I have always felt quite daunted at the thought of making koliva myself. Wheat is vulnerable to fermentation processes once it comes in contact with moisture. Boiled wheat needs to be dried and kept in cool conditions, otherwise it can easily turn toxic and cause food poisoning; although this was more common in the past when food safety measures were less stringent, every now and then we still hear about cases of food poisoning breaking out after a memorial service during the hot weather in the summertime. This is what has stopped me from making koliva in the past: it felt a little like mushroom-hunting.

Although koliva have been known to Greek people since antiquity, and are made right throughout the year by confectioners specialised in the job, koliva recipes use three ingredients that generally don't get used much in the Greek kitchen: hulled whole wheat grain, toasted crushed sesame seeds and toasted chickpeas ground to a flour.

Cooking Greek food most of my life, using more or less the same recipes handed down from one generation to the next, I believe that koliva are one of those dishes which represent an important culinary experience in every Greek person's life. I felt that I had to make koliva one day, simply to fulfil my own beliefs concerning my Greek heritage. But since there is no death in the family to commemorate, how could I do this without traumatising my family? 

Although not generally eaten as a sweet outside the demands of tradition, Greek koliva make a delicious dessert. I've even heard of them being served with ice-cream! They are just sweet enough to be enjoyed as a snack any time of the day, and their composition make them the perfect breakfast cereal. Koliva contain everything that regular boxed breakfast cereal contains: whole grains (in this case wheat), and fruit in the form of dried nuts and raisins. But unlike koliva, breakfast cereals have an unacceptable sodium content. It's common knowledge that boxed cereals aimed at children contain both sugar and salt in plentiful supplies, something that even breakfast cereal companies admit themselves. Although koliva are initially made without any sugar added, they are always served with sugar, since the icing sugar that coats them is mixed into the koliva when the 'cake' is shared out after the memorial service. Sugar content can be regulated, as the amount of sugar added to koliva depends on the maker. They taste just as good without any added sugar, since there is a high composition of dried fruit in koliva. When sugar (which creates moisture) is added too soon to koliva, they turn out sludgy. Some people prefer them this way, while others prefer them drier. The drier they are, the slower the fermentation process.

The pomegranate seeds and the blanched almonds were still moist when I mixed the other ingredients, so I let them dry in the fridge overnight before I added them the next day to the nuts-and-flour mixture.

Fresh pomegranate seeds are usually added to koliva when they are in season. Pomegranate forms an important part of koliva due to its connections with the underworld: Dimitra's daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades to become his wife, and the story goes that she refused to eat anything he gave her until her hunger got the better of her. She ate six pomegranate seeds before Hades released her to the world above. Those six seeds represent the darker colder months of the year (Autumn and Winter) when Dimitra is grieving for the loss of her daughter's company, time Persephone spends with her husband, the King of the underworld.

Koliva are always eaten sweetened after a church service since they are always covered in fine icing sugar. At home, I had the chance to have mine without any sugar at all, but it was hard to convince the kids to do the same!

One 500g packet of wheat makes quite a lot of koliva. I was a little worried that I would be making too much and we wouldn't eat them quickly enough before they went off. But I needn't have worried. The supermarket assistant who I asked to direct me to the shelf where hulled wheat was kept (a product I've never used in our daily cooking) gave me a bit of advice about how to keep koliva in perfect condition so that you can enjoy them all week, and even longer. She told me that if I want to make koliva to be enjoyed for personal use rather than for a memorial service (she was obviously an expert in doing this herself), I should keep the boiled (and dried) wheat in a separate bowl in the fridge from the remaining ingredients (which can be mixed up in another bowl). In this way, she said, the wheat can be used (and more importantly, won't go off) for anything up to a fortnight. Sugar should only be added when serving.  

Given that there is no real reason to make koliva in our house, I had to think of a way to get my family to consume them once I made them. I called them 'breakfast cereal', and added chocolate drops to make them more palatable, just like Yianni did at MAICh. They turned out to be very successful. I gave myself the chance to have a go at preparing koliva, at the same time as overcoming my fear of making this special dish which invokes feelings of ethnicity for all Greeks. This cereal dish constituted our daily breakfasts for the first week of this year, a time when grains were traditionally cooked in Crete in the past as a way of welcoming prosperity in the household. 

It is customary, when making koliva for loved ones departed to add a few drops or a pinch of an ingredient that the deceased was paticularly partial to, something like their favorite food, eg olive oil, coffee grounds, etc, to personalise the koliva. This was the only part of the ritual that I did not perform, for obvious reasons.

Here are the three recipes that I based my own version on: a koliva recipe by 3A company, one of the firms that packages wheat grains; the breakfast of our ancestors by Peftasteri; and food for the dead by Mariana Kavroulaki (only this one is in English). They all generally use the same technique and ingredients to make koliva.

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Submarine (Υποβρύχιο)

Supermarkets are clever at manipulating their customers' preferences. Products that are popular (usually through advertising) are placed on the shelves where the customer's eyes usually fall first, ensuring their continued popularity. The less accessible shelves are for products that aren't frequently in demand (eg tinned baked beans in Greece)...

It was much easier for me to take this photograph than it was to take down a can; note that the cheapest tin of baked beans (the Greek canning company's) was practically inaccessible to height-deprived people like myself. Baked beans are only bought by tourists in Greece.

...while the lower shelves are often used for products that are still in demand, but people are being swayed to buy an alternative item (eg bars of soap, slowly becoming obsolete due to the rise in popularity of liquid soap).

The shelves are filled with liquid soap products, while there was only one - yes, just one - with the traditional cakes of soap, which were all placed by my feet, below the liquid soap for hands (not the shower) and the toothpastes.

The demise of bars of soap in favour of the trendier liquid soap is only to be expected. Such evidence should be viewed as an inevitable consequence of progress. And so it is with foodstuff relegated to the bottom shelf; this could be viewed as a sign that they are bordering the obsolete.

This idea for the following discussion came to me after Allison received her book prize from my quiz. She thanked me for the book, as well as for the stamps that were placed by the post office clerk on the envelope, which included one depicting a dessert glass filled with water, with a teaspoon of a white gluey mixture dunked in it. This white blob is eaten like a popsicle, licked off the spoon and continually dunked into the ice-cold water. This is what is referred to in Greece as a 'submarine', although back in the good old days, we used to call it 'vanila' because of the flavouring we preferred: the creamy white paste is made with sugar and flavoured with vanilla or mastic. I've also seen pink and green vanilas floating around over the years (presumably flavoured with cherry and pistachio, respectively).

I still collect stamps, although they're much harder to come by these days. The stamp on the right depicts a mastic-flavoured submarine. The stamp on the right shows Dino Iliopoulos, a famous Greek comedian from the black and white era.

Growing up in New Zealand, we had this sweet regularly. It was one of the things Greeks often brought back with them (along with vlita seeds and Parthenon souvenirs) in their suitcases after a visit to the homeland, to give away as presents to other ex-patriot Greek immigrants. But my children still haven't even tried it, and they were born and live in Greece! This should not sound too surprising: sugary desserts are no longer fashionable among the health conscious food world, and there are so many other sweets and desserts cheaply available nowadays in Greece (including ice-cream which was once considered a luxury), so that the submarine is becoming almost obsolete. I would never ask for it now myself, as I am well-informed about obesity, dental problems and hyperactivity; what a shame, because now I know too much and cannot enjoy what I once did (although I must also admit that I find it too sweet for my liking in my older age).

I finally found old-fashioned vanila on the bottom shelf, below the tinned fruit and other Greek spoon sweets, near the pasteli and loukoumi.

Allison's message prompted me to go and look for some vanila, which I remember was always packed in a glass with a lid sealed by a piece of sellotape printed with the advertiser's name. It took me a while to find it, mainly because I couldn't categorise it according to the product allocation of the supermarket shelves. It wasn't a breakfast cereal or a biscuit, nor was it a kind of spread or syrup. After a lengthy search I found it on the bottom shelf, below the preserved cherries in syrup and other classic Greek spoon sweets, along with other less popular (but once highly revered) traditional Greek sweets: loukoumi, also known as Turkish delight (superseded by chocolates) and pastelli (now replaced by Mars Bars and other wafer biscuit bars covered in chocolate).

I chose to buy this jar of vanila (1.70 euro for 400g) because of its classic packaging: a (plastic) glass, sellotape seal over its lid advertising the manufacturer, and very old-fashioned labelling; not even the telephone number of the (local) manufacturer has been updated! Vanila is also sold in more modern packaging, but nothing beats this one for nostalgia.

Reviving the submarine tradition in my house creates a dilemma. There is no shortage of sweets in my kitchen at the moment, what with ice-cream, zucchini chocolate cake and watermelon (the best summer 'sweet' of all) at the height of its season. I felt as if I were behaving unnecessarily old-fashioned, acting in an obsolete manner, about something that is itself becoming obsolete. But I was deeply mistaken in my belief that it couldn't become a favorite hot weather treat, even in our own 'organically cooked' household. Both the children enjoyed their submarine, and my husband recounted his memories of this treat: it was the first thing he and his hunting friends asked for in the cafe at Lakkous after they had spent three days and two nights hunting in the Omalos plateau - their tired bodies were in need of sugar to regain their strength.

Submarine - Υποβρύχιο (ipovrihio)

Allison's message revived a memory from my youth that had been stored away in the attic of my mind, a memory I had never bothered to access for a long long time. It was in the same drawer (or was it a floppy disk?) where I kept my memories of old black and white Greek films and images of my grandparents. This prompts me to wonder what culinary memories my own children will lock away in their own minds when they are my age, and whether I'll be around to prompt their nostalgia for them.

Kinder Surprise vs. Submarine

I'm not so sure that they will remember my zucchini chocolate cake with the same pride that I make it for them; their sweeter memories will probably be related to the Kinder Surprise.

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Apricot jam (Μαρμελάδα βερύκοκο)

The house is inundated with fresh produce at the moment - apart from zucchini which always seems to outdo itself every year, there are aubergines (I need to start making moussaka), vlita (I have given away two bagfuls so far and collected half a dozen myself)) and onions (they'll last till the end of summer). The peppers are also doing well, while the tomatoes are starting to ripen (ftou ftou ftou, to avoid the plants becoming cursed).

The apricot tree (on the right) also gave us about five kilos of apricots all in one go. Apricots are delicious, but you can't get through five kilos very quickly. If you've been eating a lot of vegetables, apricots don't go down very well. I've just picked out the softer ones and turned them into jam for breakfast in the autumn. Delia Smith includes an all-purpose jam recipe for plums in her Complete Cookery Course, which can be replaced by similar soft stone fruit like peaches and apricots. I've used Delia's recipe for orange and lemon marmalade, with great success, and this one is no different. Delia may call it preserve, but I prefer the more common name - jam.


You need:
1 kilo of stoned fruit, halved or cut into smaller pieces if you don't prefer whole fruit in your jam
750g sugar
the juice of a lemon

If the fruit is very soft (and therefore not so tasty as fresh fruit), let it stew uncovered on the lowest heat to let out all the juices. The fruit doesn't have to be in perfect condition - it will not affect the taste, texture or colour. If the fruit is hard, you may need to add some water to the pot. Once the fruit is soft and mushy, add the sugar and stir it into the fruit thoroughly so that it leaves no granules. Once this is done, stir in the lemon juice and let the jam cook on low heat for another half an hour.

She also uses the kernels extracted from the stones of the fruit, but that's just for decoration. Another nice addition in this jam is shavings of lemon peel added in the final stage of cooking. It's nice, but not if you have young children, who want to eat plain jam, not gourmet preserve!


Delia has a wonderful way to check when jam or marmalade is ready to set once the sugar has boiled with the fruit. Place a saucer in the deep freeze. When you are ready to check the set of the jam, take out the frozen plate, and place a teaspoonful of the jam on it. "Allow it to cool for a few seconds, then push it with your finger: if a crinkly skin has formed on the jam, then it has set. If it hasn't set, boil it again for another 5 minutes and do another test." This really works!



When the jam is ready, let it settle before pouring it into warmed sterilised jars. I seal mine with a piece of plastic wrap while the jam is still hot, then secure the jars with the lid. When I'm ready to open the jar for use, I hear a little popping sound, the same kind you hear when opening a store-bought jar of preserved fruit or vegetables, and I know that I've sealed the jar correctly.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.