It has taken me a whole 8 months to find this amazing Cypriot Cultural website. It is fantastic. My Relief Society president, Julieth, invited me to participate in a workshop where we explore traditional Cyprus sweets. They call them spoon sweets, among other names. I was a little reticent, but Julieth is a very outgoing, sweet Colombian woman who has amazing enthusiasm. She is a lot of fun too, so I gladly went. Our driver, Elder Hofhiens, took us an hour into the Troodos mountains. There we came to a little home shop that specializes in selling spoon sweets for special events, like weddings and anniversaries.
They showed us around their shop. We got up close to the hot vats of sugary goodness, we cut the spoon sweets, boxed them up, and shrink wrapped them. We did the whole process. And while we were doing it, they let us try the different flavors! My favorite was anise, called oozo in Cypriot Greek. It has a mild licorice flavor. Julieth’s favorite was orange (portokali). She liked many other flavors too but portokali was the only name I recognized!
It was a treat to go out to this workshop and visit with real Greeks speaking Greek and not English. Julieth speaks a little Greek, English and a lot of Spanish. I speak limited Greek, some Spanish and a lot of English. Put us together with the Ourania and we were doing sign language too! Luckily Mikilides spoke some English:-)
The process: The sugar mixture boils and gets thicker as it cooks for 8 hours. Then it is poured into trays where it cools overnight. Once cooled, it is dumped out onto a table thick with powdered sugar. A machine cuts it into long lines, then a worker makes perpendicular cuts to form squares. We got to do this part AND arrange them in packages.
As a fun bonus, we got to take a whole box of our favorite flavor home with us! The whole workshop and taste-testing was free and then I got a pack of my favorite home with me! Wow! What a deal!
My Cypriot souvenir of traditional spoon sweets. The expiration date is one year, but I doubt it will make the week.
krhofhiens.com 