Vasilopita (Greek New Year’s Cake)
Serves 8
15 mins prep
40 mins cook
55 mins total
Vasilopita is a fun, traditional Greek cake made for New Year's Day. Hide a coin in the batter for one lucky person to find for good luck going into the new year.
Preheat the oven to 350F and grease a 10 inch spring form pan with butter. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper. Set aside.
In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl add the eggs and sugar and use a hand mixer to beat the eggs and sugar until creamy and pale in color, about 1-2 minutes.
To the egg and sugar mixture add the olive oil, 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp orange juice, whole milk, orange zest and vanilla extract and mix together with the hand mixer on low speed to fully combine.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low speed until well combined.
Pour the cake batter into the prepared cake pan and gently place the foil-wrapped coin into the batter. Smooth out the top of the cake batter and then bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes before gently removing it from the pan to fully cool. Once cooled, sprinkle icing sugar over top of the whole cake and then use the pomegranate seeds to make the new year number (i.e. 2025, 2026 etc) on top of the icing sugar (see photos in the blog post).
