Skiing in Abruzzo – snow report
The most popular ski resorts, the updated snow report and useful information on how to find lifts or book accommodation for your winter holiday
The dish
What cicerchiata is
The Carnival sweet you eat with your hands.
Cicerchiata is a simple, festive sweet: a dough of eggs, flour, sugar and oil is cut into lots of little balls the size of pulses, fried and then «bound» with warm honey.
While still warm, the mixture is shaped into a ring or a dome and decorated with coloured sprinkles, candied peel or almonds. It is brought to the table whole and everyone breaks off a piece: the perfect sweet for Carnival parties with friends and children.
What you need
Ingredients
For one ring serving 8–10.
For the dough balls
- 500 g plain (00) flour
- 5 eggs
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- Grated zest of 1 lemon
- 1 pinch of salt
- Sunflower oil for frying
For the honey
- 300 g wildflower honey
- 2 tablespoons sugar
To decorate
- Coloured sprinkles
- Candied orange peel or toasted almonds, to taste
Step by step
Method
- Make a well of flour and put the eggs, sugar, oil, lemon zest and salt in the centre. Knead into a smooth, firm dough.
- Leave the dough to rest, covered, for about 30 minutes.
- Roll it into ropes as thick as a pencil and cut them into pieces of about 1 cm; roll them between your palms into little balls.
- Fry the balls a few at a time in plenty of hot oil until golden, and drain them on kitchen paper.
- In a wide pan warm the honey with the sugar over a low heat until runny and slightly foamy.
- Tip the balls into the honey and stir gently until they are all well coated.
- Turn the mixture out onto a lightly oiled serving plate and, with hands dipped in cold water, shape it into a ring.
- Decorate at once with the sprinkles, before the honey sets, and leave to cool.
From our home kitchen
Tips
- The balls should be small and even: they cook quickly and stay crunchy.
- Do not overheat the honey: if it caramelises, the cicerchiata becomes hard.
- Wetting your hands with cold water lets you shape the mixture without burning yourself or having it stick.
- It keeps for a few days covered with cling film in a cool place.
Careful: hot honey burns much more than water. Let it cool for a moment before shaping the ring and keep children away from the stove.
Gallery
Photos
Tap a photo to enlarge it.
Tradition
History and trivia
The name comes from the cicerchia (grass pea), an ancient pulse of central Italy: the little dough balls look just like its seeds.
It is a humble sweet of peasant origin, made with ingredients that were always in the house – eggs, flour and honey – to celebrate the last days before Lent.
Did you know? the cicerchia, the pulse that gives the sweet its name, is still grown in parts of Abruzzo and the Marche and has come back into fashion in traditional soups.