Diples | Golden Diples | Greek Pastry in Honey Syrup

Diples, a delicious honey soaked greek sweet pastries! It's a very popular dessert throughout the greece and it's almost prepared on every special occasion in the family. 

Diples got its name from the greek word  for " fold". Thin sheets of dough fried and roll/fold into spirals at the same time in the oil and later soaked in honey syrup.

It's quite challenging to roll the sheets into spirals in the hot oil.You need lot of patience to make this and it takes me approximately 70 mins just to fry the stripes made from one cup of flour 😇. 

I took the reference from here on how to roll the dough into spirals. Though the spirals are not so perfect,i'm satisfied with the result on my first attempt.


There are quite a  different variation of making this diples. Some recipe use orange juice for making dough and some other uses brandy and i'm not sure which way is  more traditional. And also for flavoring, orange blossom water or  cinnamon is used. 

As i already have orange blossom water with me, i used it, but you can use cinnamon too.Coming to the honey syrup, it's highly recommended to use greek honey for best flavor, as i don't have it, i used clover honey. Over all i really enjoyed the frying part while making  this sweet and we loved this diples so much.Recipe sources are from here and here .

Diples|Greek Sweet Pastries

Preparation Time : 30 mins | Cooking Time : 70 mins | Serves : 22 
Recipe Category: Sweets/Dessert | Recipe Cuisine: Greek
Diples, Golden Diples, Greek Pastry Diples, a delicious honey soaked greek sweet pastries!

Sandhiya https://www.facebook.com/SandhiyasCookbook https://www.instagram.com/sandhiyascookbook/

Ingredients
All purpose flour - 1 cup
Egg - 1
Orange Juice - 2 tbsp
Baking soda - 1/2 tsp
Sugar - 1 tsp
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Orange Blossom water - 1 tsp
Oil - for frying
Nuts - for garnishing.
For Syrup
Honey - 1/2 cup
Water - 1/4 cup
Orange Blossom water - 1/2 tsp

Procedure

Crack open a egg in a bowl, add sugar into it and beat well it becomes frothy.

Then add the orange juice,orange blossom water and mix well. Sieve together the flour,baking powder and salt into egg mixture.

Mix well with your hands until it becomes a nice dough.Cover the dough with lid and let it aside for 30 mins.

After 30 mins, divide the dough into four equal parts and roll each dough into thin sheets and cut into 1/2 inch stripes.

Do the same for the remaining dough. Now prepare the honey syrup, add honey and water  in a sauce pan and bring to boil & let it simmer for 5 mins until it becomes thick and sticky.

Finally add the orange blossom water into honey syrup and switch off the flame. Heat the oil for deep frying in a shallow pan.

Hold one side of stripe in the fork and the other side in your hand,gently immersed in hot oil and roll till the end, it's hard to explain in words,do check out the video for better understanding.

Remove the diples and place it on paper tissue for few mins, then add into the honey syrup and let it soak for 10 -15 mins and then remove it on plate.

Finally garnish with dry nuts and serve.

Related : How to make Pistachio Baklava

Notes:

• Orange Blossom Water gives wonderful flavor to the pastries.
• Instead of roll into spirals, you can cut into small stripes and fry.
• Roll the sheets into thin,to get the crispy pastries.
• Both the honey syrup and pastries should be warm, so that it soaks well.
• It may need more or less of orange juice depends on your flour texture.So always start with 2 tbsp, if needed add more and make a soft dough.
• 30 mins resting time helps to roll the dough easily.