Zeppole di San Giuseppe. St. Joseph, Jesus’ father, is Sicily’s most important saint. And, the Festival of St. Joseph is celebrated on March 19th with the same passion and excitement as Thanksgiving is celebrated here in the States. In the middle ages, there was a pretty serious drought and famine and the peasants prayed to God for rain and asked St. Joseph to go to God to support their cause. They promised a special feast to honor St. Joseph if he made it rain. And, rain it did. And the holiday was born.
Families, individuals and communities that have asked for and received favor from St. Joseph create Tavola di San Giuseppe or St. Joseph’s Table to offer thanks on this special day. The table traditionally contains beautiful linens and candles and food that would have been grown by the peasants. If you lived in a coastal town, fish would also be on the table. No meat though, since this feast is celebrated during the Lenten season. But, the highlights of the meal are the sweets.
And, Zeppole di San Giuseppe is one of those special pastries; a fritter topped with orange scented pastry cream that’s finished with a sour cherry. Or, if you’re fortunate enough to be able to find Amarena Cherries – well – I’m just jealous. Amarena cherries are grown in Bologna and Modena regions of Italy and then they’re packed in an amazing syrup. Nothing like them.
The basis for this fried pastry is pate a choux or cream puff paste; the stuff that eclairs and cream puffs are made of. You can see that orange zest is added to the pate a choux. The dough is piped with a star tip onto greased 3″x 3″ squares of foil (I still love the non-stick kind). The foil allows you to easily pick up the piped pate a choux and carefully place it into hot oil (375F). The foil drops right away in a few seconds and you can lift the foil out of the hot oil with a pair of tongs.
Here you can see, with that really, really dark fritter in the upper left corner, that I let the oil get too hot for that first zeppole. But, I recovered with the rest. That’s the beautiful golden brown color that you’re going for. You’ll turn these once while they’re frying to get even color on both sides.
The orange-scented pastry cream comes together pretty quickly, but you’ll want to make this first so that you can get it in the refrigerator to get cold. Make sure you cover the pastry cream with plastic wrap and press it into the surface. This will prevent a skin from forming.
My favorite tool ever. Can’t live without a microplane zester:
Once the pastry cream is cold and the fritters are cool, pipe the pastry cream onto the fritter, top with an Amarena cherry and dust with powdered sugar. Bellisimo!!!
Yields 12
This fritter made from Pate a Choux is topped with orange-scented pastry cream and an Amarena cherry in celebration of St. Joseph's Day on March 19th.
PTH30MPrep Time
PT1HMCook Time
1 hr, 30 Total Time
Save RecipeIngredients
- Orange-Scented Pastry Cream
- 1 cup (8 ounces) whole milk
- Grated Zest of one orange
- 1/3 cup (2.4 ounces) granulated sugar
- 3 large egg yolks
- 1/4 cup (1.1 ounces) Gluten Free Farina All Purpose Flour
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- Zeppole di San Giuseppe
- 1 cup (8 ounces) water
- 1 stick butter (4 ounces), unsalted, cut into 1 Tablespoon pieces
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (4.4 ounces) Gluten Free Farina All Purpose Flour
- 4 Large Eggs
- 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
Instructions
- Orange Scented Pastry Cream*
- Place the milk, orange zest and half the sugar in a medium-sized saucepan.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks and remaining sugar together. Add the flour and whisk until combined.
- Heat the milk mixture over medium heat until the mixture comes to a boil.
- Whisk one-third of the mixture into the yolk mixture, whisking all the time.
- Pour the yolk/milk mixtrure back into the milk mixture while whisking.
- Bring back to a boil and boil for 1 minute while whisking.
- Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract.
- Place the cream into a bowl and cover the surface with plastic wrap ensuring that the plastic wrap touches the surface.
- Place in the refrigerator until cold.
- Pate a Choux
- Before you start making the mix, make 3"x3" squares of foil. You'll need 12. Use non-stick foil or grease each piece of foil with coconut or olive oil.
- Place 1 and 1/2 quarts of oil - I like peanut oil because it has a high smoke point - into a medium saucepan. If you have a thermometer, keep that close by.
- Set up a cookie sheet lined with paper towel or brown paper.
- Place the water, butter and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
- Remove from the heat and stir the flour in all at once. Return to heat and continue to cook the mixture until it leaves the sides of the pan.
- Place the Choux Paste in the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix on low for 1 minute until the mixture cools a little.
- With the mixer running on low, add one egg at a time and beat until it's completely incorporated into the mix. Continue with the remaining eggs.
- Add sugar and orange zest.
- Place choux paste into a pastry bag fitted with a star tip.
- Heat oil in pan to 375F.
- Pipe a circle of choux paste onto each foil square.
- Once oil has reached temperature, gently place piped choux paste into oil. I only do two at a time because of the size of my pan.
- The foil will fall away from the choux paste pretty quickly. Using tongs, remove the foil from the saucepan. When the bottom is golden brown, turn the zeppole and fry until the other side is also golden brown.
- Remove to paper towel to drain. Cool.
- To Assemble:
- Place zeppole on serving plate.
- Pipe circle of orange-scented pastry cream on top.
- Place amarena cherry on top.
- Dust with Confectioner's sugar.
- Enjoy!
- *Orange Pastry Cream Recipe from [u]Great Italian Desserts
- [/u] by Nick Malgieri 1990
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