From yesterday’s Baked Zeppole di San Giuseppe to the classic Zeppola di San Giuseppe, the leap is short. In fact, the dough is the same, the choux pastry, the cooking is the same, the cream with which I filled them is the same. So you may be wondering what’s different? The original recipe of the Zeppole di San Giuseppe calls for filling with cream and sour cherry. So, even if you really loved yesterday’s variant given the blog visit results, I am here to recommend the classic filling of zeppole.
If you missed the Baked Zeppole recipe you can easily recover it on the blog home page. If you want to try another version, in this case savory, you can prepare the Savory Baked Zeppole di San Giuseppe with my recipe!
The Father’s Day has always been an important moment in my life, a sweet, a small gift for my Paciccio was always there. Once even too big, it had my mother’s hand in it, but that’s another story.
If Father’s Day has already passed and you stumbled upon this recipe of mine and are tired of Zeppole, know that you can try the Cream Puffs with Strawberries and Chantilly Cream. A small pastry delight you cannot and should not miss!
Of course, you will also find the recipe for Grandma Licia’s pastry cream, which you can use not only to fill the Zeppole di San Giuseppe but also other sweets like the classic Nua Cake or the Cocoa Nua Cake version.
I would say not to waste any more time and move on to the recipe of the Zeppola di San Giuseppe, but first I want to remind you of the social media channels of my cooking blog: Facebook fan page of Le Ricette di Bea with a recipe a day and lots of food content and more in the stories; Instagram profile of Le Ricette di Bea with all the posts and stories of my preparations and more. Are you ready for March 19? Come on, Father’s Day is approaching!
If you are curious about other recipes with choux pastry or want to prepare an alternative dessert to zeppole for Father’s Day open the links below:
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Economical
- Rest time: 30 Minutes
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 16 zeppole
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All seasons
- Energy 257.99 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 22.90 (g) of which sugars 11.31 (g)
- Proteins 8.58 (g)
- Fat 15.18 (g) of which saturated 8.71 (g)of which unsaturated 6.39 (g)
- Fibers 0.40 (g)
- Sodium 57.78 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 1 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients for 8 Zeppole di San Giuseppe
- 2 cups water
- 7 oz butter
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 6 eggs (medium-large at room temperature, might need 7)
- 16 syrup cherries
- 1 egg
- 2 egg yolks
- 0.8 cup sugar
- 0.5 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 cups milk
- 1 vial vanilla (or vanilla seeds)
Tools
- 1 Wooden spoon
- 1 Pot
- 1 Spoon
- 1 Stand mixer
- 1 Piping bag
- 3 Baking trays
- 1 Oven
- 3 Parchment paper
- 1 Small saucepan
- 1 Hand whisk
Never ever make choux pastry with whisks or beaters, if you don’t have a stand mixer take a large steel bowl or pot, a wooden spoon and proceed as follows: work the choux pastry after turning the flour into the water where we dissolved the butter, adding one egg at a time, possibly beaten in a small bowl with a fork. With the wooden spoon, you will incorporate it with the mixture until completely absorbed, only then you can add the next egg.
Recipe Steps
For the preparation of pastry cream follow the procedure for the cream keeping the doses indicated in the list above. Once our cream has cooled, proceed with filling our Baked Zeppole di San Giuseppe.
Start with preparing the base, the Choux Pastry. Melt the butter in a pot with the water and salt. When it reaches a boil, turn off the heat and add the previously sifted flour all at once. Now stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mixture starts to detach from the sides of the pot on its own.
Let the choux pastry cool for about twenty minutes. Once it is well-cooled, you can either continue to knead with the wooden spoon in the pot or take the stand mixer. I obviously took the stand mixer! Kneading by hand with a wooden spoon is hard work. So, pour the dough into the mixer bowl and start at the minimum speed. Otherwise, proceed with the wooden spoon in the same manner.
Remember to turn on the oven to static mode at 340°F (170°C) and continue with the recipe. Begin breaking the eggs and adding them one at a time, work until each egg is fully absorbed before adding another. As specified in the ingredient list, compared to the recipe I had read, I only used 6 eggs as they were medium-sized. If they are small, you’ll need to add the seventh. You’ll notice this if the dough isn’t fluid enough yet. At this point, we have a stringy but not too liquid mixture, free of lumps.
Now we can place the parchment paper sheets on the three rectangular baking trays. Why three? My zeppole are quite large, so I need to space them for baking. Each tray should be baked individually so it can be placed in the center of the oven. In fact, I left the choux pastry in the piping bag, creating 6 zeppole at a time.
Take the piping bag, with a spoon, transfer the choux pastry into the bag and start forming the zeppole by making medium-sized baskets. On each baking tray, I created six zeppole, if you want smaller zeppole, you can make smaller nests and get more of them.
We are ready for the first baking. Bake each tray with the zeppole for about 30 minutes. You can also decrease the temperature every 10 minutes if you start at 355-375°F (180-190°C) and gradually decrease by 10 degrees each time. You’ll see the cream puffs puff up and turn a nice golden color. Once baking is complete, transfer the zeppole to a wire rack to cool. Complete the baking of all the zeppole in this way. Let all the cream puffs cool before filling them with cream.
Then cut each zeppola in half horizontally, pass the pastry cream into another piping bag and fill the inside of the zeppole. Add some cream on top as shown in the photos. Now take the jar of syrup cherries. You can either insert some inside or use them only as an external decoration as I did. One for every Zeppola di San Giuseppe. We are ready to serve the zeppole, of course, you can also add powdered sugar if you like.
I can only wish Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads reading my blog that your children may love you as much as I love my Paciccio and above all, enjoy your meal! See you at the next recipe!
Zeppola di San Giuseppe Variations:
The first one that comes to mind is the version with cream and chocolate that I proposed yesterday. Then there’s the variant with pistachio cream, with dark chocolate, with coffee cream. In short, the filling is varied and always delicious!
Storage:
Zeppole with cream can be stored in a dessert container for a maximum of one day, then you should close them in a fridge container for a maximum of another day.
