Easter is cheesecake time at our house. I prepare Ukrainian cheese desserts for the holiday each year and experiment with cheesecake recipes from other cuisines. This year, I am adding melopita to my dessert repertoire. Its Greek name, comprised of two words – mela, which means honey, and pita, which means pie, implies that it is made from honey, but it is a cheesecake sweetened with honey.
Melopita, a speciality of Orthodox church feast days, is a popular Easter dessert throughout Greece, where milk is forbidden during Lent and the abundant milk is preserved into hard and soft cheeses. Traditionally, it is a light dessert served at the end of the Easter feast, ending the 40-day Lenten fast.
Greek culinary traditions embrace the concept of simple, peasant-style cooking using local ingredients and creative techniques. Greek village cooking uses readily available ingredients such as fresh vegetables, herbs, olive oil, and grains and features simple cooking methods like stewing, baking, and grilling to make the most of limited resources.
During Lent, religious Greeks abstain from eating meat, eggs or dairy products. Greek cooks prepare simple fasting dishes of vegetables, seafood, stuffed vine leaves, beans, and soups. The diet on Good Friday, traditionally a day off work and from cooking, is most austere.
On Holy Saturday, cooks prepare magiritsa, a traditional soup of lamb giblets with lemon and vegetables, to be eaten after returning home from Easter service, which begins on Saturday evening. Greek families break the Lenten fast early Sunday morning with a meal consisting of magiritsa, sweet breadlike challah, and red-dyed eggs.
Easter feasting begins later in the morning, lasts all Sunday, and continues into Monday. The centerpiece Easter dish is lamb (or, in some parts of Greece, a goat) roasted on a grill, more magiritsa, and various specialty meats roasted on a spit. Waiting for the lamb to roast, Greeks feast on abundantly laid tables of savory snacks, such as meze (meh-ZEH, which means a taste or bite), served as a complement to drinks.
Meze offerings can be simple or elaborate. A typical meze table may contain, for example, a mixture of appetizers: olives, cheeses, vegetables, homemade bread, numerous dips, grilled octopus or fried fish, meatballs, sausages, filo pastries and stuffed grape leaves. Of course, there is no shortage of wine and ouzo (OO-zoh), an anise-flavored aperitif that encourages the appetite and complements many different flavors.
Melopita, an ancient pastry originally from the island of Sifnos in the Cyclades group of islands in the Aegean Sea, is now baked in various versions throughout Greece. It provides a sweet ending to all-day feasting.
It is a simple make-ahead dessert with few ingredients but requires certain components for success:
Filling ingredients
1. High-quality honey is essential: Honey is considered an aphrodisiac by Greeks, and it produces the delicate sweetness of melopita. In this recipe, honey is added to the filling and later used as a glaze on the finished cake. Greek thyme, citrus, or wildflower honey are excellent complements to the soft, fresh cheese used in melopita. I used wild thyme honey.
2. A tangy soft cheese and thick yogurt create rich flavor. Since melopita has few ingredients, a flavorful cheese with a distinct taste is essential. Greek Easter usually falls when mizithra or anthotyros, soft, fresh white cheeses made from sheep’s milk or a mixture of sheep’s and goat’s milk, are produced. Myzithra or anthotyro are rich in flavor but hard to find in America. If these cheeses are unavailable, then whole milk sheep’s or cow’s milk ricotta or mascarpone make suitable substitutes, but they may need to be strained through cheesecloth overnight to remove excess moisture. A full-fat cream cheese may be added to replicate the creaminess of Greek cheeses, and full-fat Greek yogurt to provide the needed tanginess. In this recipe, I use whole cow’s milk ricotta, a small amount of cream cheese and non-fat Greek yogurt.
3. Fresh eggs and a thickener are needed for proper filling density: Baked melopita has a texture somewhere between custard and cheesecake. When combined with dairy and sugar, fresh, large, room-temperature eggs, especially the yolks, generate a thick gel that sets the pie’s custard and cheese mixture. A tablespoon of rice flour or corn starch assures gelling.
4. Various flavorings and toppings are suitable. Early melopita recipes use no flavorings other than honey and a dusting of cinnamon, and it is delicious plain. In more contemporary recipes, add grated orange or lemon zest and vanilla. I added lemon juice, orange zest, and vanilla to the cheese mixture and pistachios and hazelnuts to the crust and to the honey topping.
4. Versatility: Melopita can be prepared in various ways: traditionally, crustless, as it is enjoyed on the island of Sifnos, with a bottom and/or top pastry crust, in a pie shell, or with a phyllo crust à la baklava. It can also be made as a tart. I made it with a phyllo and nut crust.
Phyllo crust ingredients
Final tips for a successful melopita:
All ingredients should be room temperature. The cheese batter will be smooth if mixed low and slow, minimizing the incorporation of too much air into the filling. The filling should be passed through a sieve to remove any lumps.
Once melopita is in the oven, it is essential to be patient and not open the oven door to check for doneness during the first hour to ensure even rising and baking.
Melopita will set properly if allowed to cool on the counter for 1-2 hours before refrigerating overnight.
This melopita is simple, light, fluffy, creamy, and irresistible. The crunchy phyllo crust, fragrant honey, and earthy nuts merge with a citrus-flavored ricotta-yogurt to create a decadent and delicious dessert with just the right amount of sweetness and tanginess. It’s a great finish to a day of feasting with seasonal fruit and strong Greek coffee or tea!
Melopita – Greek Honey Cheesecake in Phyllo-Nut Crust
For the cheese filling:
2 pounds (907 g) whole-milk ricotta, room temperature
4 ounces (100 g) cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup (240 g) plain Greek yogurt (whole fat preferred), room temperature
2 tablespoons rice flour or cornstarch
5 eggs, lightly beaten
¼ cup (85 g) sugar
½ cup Greek honey, plus more for garnish
2 teaspoons orange zest
3 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or paste
Pinch salt
For the phyllo-nut crust:
Olive oil, for the pan2 ounces (56g) melted butter
3.5 ounces (100g) chopped hazelnuts
2 ounces (56g) chopped pistachios
1 teaspoon cinnamon
10/15 sheets of phyllo pastry, thawed
For the honey syrup:
½ cup (100 g) sugar
¼ cup (60 g) water
½ cup (85 g) honey
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice, optional
Preparing filling: Put all cheese filling ingredients into a food processor bowl and blend until smooth. (The mixture should be completely smooth. Stir with a rubber spatula to ensure the honey, which tends to sink to the bottom, is mixed in.) Pour cheesecake filling through a fine mesh sieve to remove any lumps. Cover the bowl with plastic film and set aside at room temperature while preparing the crust within an hour, or refrigerate it for longer storage.
Silky, smooth cheese filling
Preparing the phyllo-nut crust: Preheat the oven to 350°F(180°C). Brush the sides and bottom of an 8-inch, 20-cm springform pan with olive oil, then line it with parchment paper. Oil the parchment.
Melt butter in a small skillet and lightly toast each type of nut separately until golden. Transfer nuts from the skillet to a small bowl and set aside.
Carefully unroll the thawed phyllo pastry and place the sheets between two clean kitchen towels to prevent the phyllo from drying out and cracking while assembling the crust.
Assembling the phyllo-nut crust
To assemble the crust, take one sheet of phyllo, brush it with the melted butter, and top with another phyllo sheet. Fit the combined sheets into the bottom and sides of the prepared pan, pressing into corners. Continue assembling the phyllo sheets and rotating as necessary to fit them until the bottom and sides of the pan are covered. Butter phyllo in the pan and sprinkle 2 tablespoons of mixed nuts on the bottom. Repeat the process three more times. Brush the top of the phyllo sheet with the melted butter and press the phyllo layers to the bottom and sides.
Pour the batter into the prepared phyllo crust, and trim the excess phyllo with kitchen shears to about an inch above the pan edge.
Ready to bake
Place the pan on a baking sheet to catch any drips and bake in a preheated oven for about 1 ½ hours until the filling has puffed up and is partially firm with a slight jiggle in the middle. Do not open the oven during the first hour. After 1 hour, check for doneness and shield the melopita top with foil if the crust is coloring fast and reduce oven temperature to 325°F(160°C). Turn the oven off even if the batter is slightly jiggly. (It will firm up as it cools). Let melopita cool in the oven with oven door ajar for an hour before transferring it to a rack to cool further to room temperature (about 1-2 hours). Refrigerate overnight.
Baked and cooling
When ready to serve, remove the cheesecake from the refrigerator and place it on a 28-ounce can over a baking sheet. Carefully remove bits of phyllo crust that are baked onto the pan. Unlock and drop the springform pan on the baking sheet, and remove parchment from the melopita sides. With a large cake spatula, lift the melopita off the pan bottom without the bottom parchment and transfer it to a serving plate.
Honey syrup ingredients
Preparing the honey syrup: Combine the honey syrup ingredients in a small saucepan and warm gently on the stove. Drizzle honey over the top of the cheesecake and brush gently on the crispy phyllo crust. Garnish with pistachios and hazelnuts and serve. (Leftover honey syrup should be transferred into a mason jar and stored in the refrigerator for other desserts.
Serves 12
Leftovers: In our household, we consume melopita within a few days. But leftovers can be portioned into slices, individually wrapped in plastic film and foil and frozen up to 2 months. Slices, defrosted in the refrigerator for 5-6 hours, will still be delicious, although the phyllo crust will lose some of its crunchiness.
Glazed melopita
Photo credits: All photos: Slava Johnson
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