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The dish
Two zeppole, one name
L’Aquila zeppole are not the ones from the coast.
Everyone links 19 March with Father’s Day in Italy. Being a sweet tooth, I link it to just one thought: zeppole! In L’Aquila that day, signs for «St Joseph’s zeppole» appear outside every bakery and pastry shop.
But we need to be clear: in Abruzzo, if you ask for a St Joseph’s zeppola you can get different things. On the coast and around Teramo it is a kind of cream puff, fried or baked, with a sour cherry in the middle. In L’Aquila, instead, it is a leavened ring, fried and dusted with sugar, similar to Roman doughnuts but different.
Both are worth trying, but as someone from L’Aquila I prefer ours. And the recipe is my mother-in-law’s, who makes the best zeppole in the world.
What you need
Ingredients
For about 25 zeppole.
- Flour as needed
- 5 eggs
- 100 g sugar, plus extra for coating
- 50 g butter or oil
- 25 g fresh yeast
- 4 small boiled potatoes
- 1 glass of the potato cooking water
- 1 glass of milk
- 1 pinch of salt
- Grated zest of 1 lemon
- Oil for frying
Step by step
Method
- Boil the potatoes, peel them and put them through a potato ricer.
- Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm potato cooking water.
- Make a well of flour on the board and put all the ingredients in the centre: potatoes, eggs, sugar, butter, dissolved yeast, milk, salt and lemon zest.
- Knead into a soft, elastic dough, adding flour if needed.
- Take a piece of dough, roll it into a rope and join the two ends into a «bow».
- Leave the zeppole to rise in a warm place, away from draughts, until well puffed up.
- Fry them in plenty of hot oil until golden, drain on kitchen paper and roll them in caster sugar straight away.
From our home kitchen
Tips
- Use floury potatoes: they make the dough wonderfully soft.
- Let the zeppole rise on squares of baking paper: that way you can slide them into the oil without losing their shape.
- The oil should be hot but not smoking, about 170 °C, so they cook through.
- They have only one flaw: they are best freshly made, so you have to eat them all at once!
Kitchen safety: fry in a deep pan, do not fill it more than halfway and never leave hot oil unattended.
Gallery
Photos
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Tradition
History and trivia
Zeppole are linked to the feast of St Joseph on 19 March, which in many parts of Italy also marks the end of winter: fried sweets were a way to celebrate with simple ingredients.
In L’Aquila the tradition lives on in the bakeries and pastry shops of the centre and the surrounding villages, where people queue to buy them warm around the feast day.
Did you know? in Abruzzo the same name is used for two very different sweets: L’Aquila’s fried ring and the coast’s cream puff. Our advice? Try both.