Baking with love for a good cause

The over 25 ladies of the church’s women’s organization, called Philoptochos, will spend hours upon hours across four to five days preparing homemade desserts for sale at the annual St. John’s Greek Festival in Blue Point.

Olympia Gouvis, the current president of the organization, helps run the kitchen with advising baker and past president Toula Dimos, who leads about 25 to 30 women in baking large quantities of about a half-dozen family recipes. The desserts include galaktoboureko, a custard-filled dessert and a crowd favorite, as well as the ever-popular baklava. Their famous loukoumades, a hot, fresh, fried-dough pastry topped with honey syrup, will be prepared on-site and made to order.

“I love the baklava sundae,” said Gouvis, adding that anything with ice cream is always better.

The process started last week on Wednesday, June 21 and Friday, June 23, and continued on Wednesday, June 28 and this Friday, June 30. They start early in the morning and often don’t finish until midnight.
“We also will take part in a few smaller days to finish up,” explained Gouvis.

The women donated all the ingredients, and the rest of the costs were covered by the treasurer, including pounds of flour, lots of honey, syrup, and plenty of walnuts. The sales from desserts alone raise up to $20K for the church. All the proceeds, including the money raised from the desserts, support the “Restoring for the Future” campaign to repair the church.

“It’s the camaraderie and the friendship; they all get along and they enjoy each other, and they enjoy working to help the church,” said Fr. Dean Panagos.

The event will take place from July 7 through July 9 on the front lawn of the church with food, pastries, and Greek traditions. The event has been a mainstay annual event in Blue Point for the past 40 years.

For the main course, there will be gyros, spanakopita, moussaka, pastitsio, Greek salad, oven-roasted lamb and more. There will also be iced Greek frappe coffee, beer and wine, including varieties imported from Greece.

The event takes place with free admission on the grounds of St. John’s Greek Orthodox Church, 77 Montauk Highway, Blue Point. For more information call 631-363-6450 or email bluepointgreekfest@gmail.com.