Today sweet recipe: grandma’s classic fried chiacchiere.

Crunchy, friable, bubbly and dry. That’s exactly how my grandma used to make chiacchiere, a recipe passed down from mother to daughter written by hand in her dessert notebook.

Few and simple ingredients, including eggs, flour, and seed oil, mixed together and then rolled out thinly and fried. She liked them without too much fuss and therefore left them rectangular without making bows or knots and just barely sprinkled some powdered sugar.

There are many recipes for chiacchiere out there, they are also made without eggs or with milk, some use grappa and some brandy but what they all have in common is their goodness. Besides various recipes, we also know that they have different names, in some regions they are called cenci, in others bugie or frappe.

Here in Abruzzo, we call them chiacchiere, an old pastry chef friend told me this name was given because when you eat them, they crackle and make noise like chatting.

Let’s see together, step by step, how to make this recipe.

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Ingredients for Grandma’s Classic Chiacchiere

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 egg
2 tsp brandy
2 tsp white wine (or sparkling wine)
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 lemon
as needed vegetable oil (for frying)

Tools

1 Scale
1 Pastry Board
1 Rolling Pin
1 Frying Pan
1 Pastry Wheel

Let’s Start!

On a work surface, pour the flour and create a well in the center to put the other ingredients, then add the sugar, whole egg, brandy, wine, three or four drops of lemon juice, and some grated lemon zest. Start mixing the ingredients inside the flour with a fork, gradually incorporating the flour. Once the dough begins to form, knead by hand until you obtain a smooth and homogeneous dough.
Wrap the chiacchiere dough in plastic wrap or cover it with an overturned bowl and let it rest for about fifteen minutes.
Take the dough and divide it into three or four parts, lightly dust the work surface with a little bit of flour and start rolling out a portion of the dough. You will need to roll it out very thin, about 1/25 inch (1 mm) would be ideal. You can do this with a rolling pin or with a pasta machine, the nonna papera.
After rolling out the dough, cut it into rectangles with the pastry wheel to give shape to our grandma’s classic fried chiacchiere. Once you have the rectangles, make a cut in the center of each one. Continue until the dough is exhausted.
In a frying pan or deep fryer, pour the seed oil and wait until it’s hot, then fry our carnival sweets, a few at a time, turning them quickly as they cook fast being so thin. Drain on paper towels and let cool.
Dust with powdered sugar and enjoy the crunchy crunchiness. Before finishing them, take a picture of your chiacchiere and post it on social media tagging me (una riccia che pasticcia instagram and facebook) and let me know if yours also “chat”