Ask the average American what they’d make with phyllo dough and they’ll probably name two dishes: spanakopita and baklava. Both great, but on a mountaintop in Crete, our editorial director J.M. Hirsch got a lesson in a lesser known way of the ubiquitous Greek pastry.

The revelation came in the form of a dessert from chef and cookbook author Marianna Leivaditaki. “Leivaditaki wants to show me portokalopita, a cake, of sorts,” he writes. “It’s a cake where we might use flour, but Cretans use fistfuls of papery phyllo, stirring it with eggs and yogurt and spices to create a batter almost pancake-like. Light and layered, it serves as the perfect foil for the bay leaf- and citrus-infused syrup poured over when it emerges from the oven. The result is warm and bright, a brilliant balance to the sweet, moist cake.”

Leivaditaki’s recipe varies from the traditional, which often is so soaked with syrup it ends up sodden. To offset some of the sog, she toasts strips of phyllo until crisp and golden before folding the pastry into the batter, a trick she learned from her mother’s friend. The result is a portokalopita that’s lighter, with a better texture and toasty flavors to play off the sweetness.

Toasted phyllo anchors this pudding-like cake

Much like puff pastry, phyllo is a dough that’s best outsourced to the professionals, so grab a box of the frozen store-bought stuff and let it thaw in the fridge overnight. Unfold it on a clean work space and cut into half-inch strips. Don’t worry if the strips tear a little while you’re cutting them—this recipe can handle a little bit of imprecision.

Once you’ve fashioned your phyllo into strips, it’s time to toast. Transfer to a baking sheet and gently pull apart the phyllo, making a tangly pile of individual papery strips. It’s slightly tedious work, but it pays off in the end. Leave the strips stuck together and they won’t toast well, and will bake into soft, almost gummy clumps.

Toast in the oven until brittle and lightly golden brown, flipping and tossing halfway through to ensure even color and texture. Again, don’t worry if a few of the strips break; they’re going to be folded into batter soon enough.

The batter is simple, and completely devoid of added flour. Greek yogurt and oil add richness while eggs bind and lift the phyllo strips, with an assist from baking powder. This creates a layered structure in the cake that, when soaked with syrup, takes on a moist, pudding-like consistency.

Don’t skimp on the oranges

You will need two oranges for this cake—juice and strips of peel from the first flavor the syrup; microplaned zest from the second goes into the batter. Choose large oranges. One tablespoon of zest may not seem like a lot, but it takes a lot to fill that spoon.

We beat the sugar for the batter with the zest using the paddle attachment of a stand mixer to extract its flavorful aromatic oils. This perfumes the cake and adds a base layer of citrus notes, but most of the flavor comes from the syrup.

To make the syrup, we dissolve sugar in a 50/50 mixture of fresh orange juice and water, heating it until dissolved, along with strips of orange zest, gently crushed cardamom pods, a cinnamon stick and bay leaves. The spices and aromatics then steep in the syrup as it cools, permeating it with a heady mixture of citrus, baking spices and light savory notes.

Even syrup distribution hinges on the right pan

This recipe calls for a 2-inch deep, 9-inch round cake pan. Do not do what I did the first time I made this cake and try to force it into a shorter pan. The cake bakes up slightly higher than a typical cake pan, creating a convex top—fine until you go to pour the syrup on top and have to watch it dribble off the sides and onto the counter.

In a deeper pan, the cake bakes up flat and stays below the top edge. This is important, as it allows you to flood the surface of the cake with syrup while it’s still warm. The syrup sinks in at the same rate over the entirety of the cake, so you don’t end up with a soggy middle and dry perimeter. (Don’t try to cheat by brushing the syrup on a convex cake. The friction from the brush will tear the delicate top.)

But before you douse the cake in syrup, you’ll need to poke some holes, to give the syrup somewhere to go. Do so by firmly and quickly pressing a toothpick through the cake’s thickness every ½ inch or so. Uncertain or slow movements can cause the crust to tear.

Add the syrup in two stages, and let the cake cool until it’s room-temperature and all the syrup has been absorbed. Serve with lightly sweetened (or unsweetened) whipped cream, crème fraîche, or tangy, full-fat Greek yogurt.

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.