Greek Portokalopita: Orange Phyllo Cake

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Dimitra's Dishes. Today we're going to be making portocalopita. Portocalopita, I've made it in the past. It's basically an orange cake that's made with phyllo, very similar to a bread pudding. You can barely tell that there's phyllo in there, but it's so delicious and creamy and custardy. It's so good. And this was, I did a little poll on Instagram a few weeks ago on recipes that you guys want me to do on the channel, or maybe you want me to update. And one of my friends on Instagram, she comments under almost most of my posts, so we kind of interact with each other. She requested that I do this recipe and add chocolate chips to it like they do on an island in Greece. And I tested it, and it's so delicious. Can't wait to share this recipe with you. Let's get started. So this is a syrup-based dessert, so we always begin by making the syrup. It's so easy to make. Just go ahead and combine one and a half cups of sugar with one and a half cups of water, plus a half cup of orange juice, and then the peel of an orange into a saucepan. Bring it all to a boil. Once the sugar has completely dissolved, give it a nice mix and take it off of the heat, and you want the syrup to cool completely. Also, go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Now it's time to prepare the phyllo. If you're using an air fryer like I did for a shortcut, then you can do this step right now. Otherwise, you can slice up your phyllo. You're go ahead and slice it into strips while it's rolled up. And then if you're doing this the night before, you could just spread it out on a big parchment paper or on your counter. You want the phyllo to be completely dry. But if you're like me, I don't have any space for that in my house. Our counter gets used. There's never an empty space for it. So I like to use my air fryer. What I do is I take, I do this in like three or four batches. It just depends on how big your basket is. You're going to want to set your air fryer to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. So you want them to be dried out. You want the phyllo to dry out so that way it could absorb that delicious custard that we're going to make. And the air fryer does a perfect job at that. The only thing that happens is, is because they're so light, the phyllo strips, sometimes they get stuck to the heating element and you are going to get a burning smell coming out of there. But don't worry about it. You can just clean it out afterwards. You could also do this in your oven. Just put them on a few baking trays and bake them at 350 degrees until they're dried and toasted. You want them, once they're done, you want them to crumble easily in your hands. You could go ahead and put them in a big bowl or let them cool completely while you make the custard. So the custard couldn't be easier to make. So in a large bowl, go ahead and add one cup of your favorite vegetable oil. You want it to have hardly any flavor to it. So I like to use a light olive oil, five eggs, a cup of plain yogurt or Greek yogurt, whatever you have on hand. I'm using Greek yogurt today. One and a quarter cups of orange juice, a cup of granulated sugar, one tablespoon of baking powder, and the zest of two large oranges. You're also going to want a little, a little pinch of salt in there and a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract. Go ahead and whisk that all up together. And then you're going to go ahead and start adding in that phyllo that's nice and toasted. You can, you're going to have to do this in a few batches because it won't all fit at once. At first, it's going to look like it's just not going to fit. There's not enough custard for there to coat all of that phyllo, but it does break down and it's all going to fit at the end. Toss that all together. And then if you want some chocolatiness in here, I'm adding one 12 ounce bag of chocolate chunks and I'm using dark chocolate. You can use semi-sweet chocolate or if you don't like chocolate, leave it all out. You could also do some dried fruit if you wanted to, like cranberries or raisins. Mix that all in. I'm using avocado cooking spray, but you can just brush this, brush the inside of the pan with some olive oil. That works too. Transfer all of that batter into the pan. Then go ahead and bake it at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour. You want it to get beautifully caramelized on top and golden. That's how you know it's ready. Once it comes out of the oven, go ahead and poke some holes in there with a knife or a toothpick and pour all of the syrup that has cooled on top. Then the hardest part of this is just waiting. You're going to have to wait until the syrup is absorbed and the portocalopita cools completely. It's going to take another hour, so it's a great dessert to make the day ahead of a party or a gathering if you're bringing this somewhere because it tastes so good cold. It also tastes very good warm with a scoop of your favorite ice cream on top. But we're going to wait for this to cool down and then we're going to cut into it so I can show you what it looks like. Technically it should cool a little bit more, but we're going to do the taste test anyway. The texture is a lot like a cake. The last time I made it when I was recipe testing, I forgot to add the orange juice inside of the cake, so I actually made more syrup. It was more syrupy, more like a baklava. It's good that way too, so if you want to make it a little more syrupy, you could add another half cup of sugar to it or maybe some more orange juice and extra liquid. It is up to you. You could serve it topped with some homemade whipped cream or your favorite ice cream right on top, but it's delicious and decadent enough as it is. The recipe, as always, is printable on the website DemetriusDishes.com. Thank you guys so much for spending time with me today. If you want to learn how to make Greek coffee, click over here and I'll see you right over there. Yia sas!