I rediscovered this dessert a couple of months ago in a cooking magazine, something I’d had in another life and had completely forgotten about. It’s called galatopita, which simply means “milk pie” in Greek, and it’s essentially phyllo dough soaked in custard. Unlike its more famous cousin galaktoboureko, galatopita skips the sugary syrup entirely, which is exactly why it comes out not too sweet, letting the milk custard itself take center stage. The dish actually has roots stretching back to ancient Greece, with the playwright Aristophanes referencing a similar milk-and-semolina dessert called “Amis” as far back as the 4th century BC.
The result is a dessert with some really lovely flavor, simple, comforting, and a nice change from heavier syrup-soaked Greek pastries.
Wanna have fun doing your own phyllo dough ? Check out how here
(Experiment 278) Galatopita
Ingredients
- 180 g milk
- 60 g heavy cream
- 100 g cane or white sugar
- generous dash of vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- phyllo dough
- 80-100 g butter
- cinnamon
- icing sugar
Instructions
- First, take butter and melt it, brush the tin you will use to bake the pie with it. This will prevent sticking and give flavour.
- Itβs already time to play with the phyllo sheets. Lay one flat and brush it with the melted butter and sprinkle a little bit of ground cinnamon. Then you want to wrinkle it gently ( think accordion) .
- Place it in the tin and repeat for as many sheets of phyllo as needed ( 8- 10). If you are artistic, which I am not; you can create some really nice designs like rosettes etc. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.
- While it bakes, we can prepare the custard for the next step. In a pot bring to a near boil the milk, cream, vanilla extract and 1/3 of the sugar. When it boils, remove it from heat.
- In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs with the remaining sugar and slowly pour the milk mixture in while whisking.
- After the pie is baked, take it out of the oven and pour over the milk mixture ( NOT all of it, when you start seeing it, stop) and put it back in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.
- Traditionally, it is served with a dusting of icing sugar.
