To celebrate St. Joseph’s Day, I decided to prepare the savory version of zeppole. These are mini baked zeppole with pecorino cream. Besides being delicious, they are also beautiful to look at. We can personalize them as we like in size, filling, and decoration. We can prepare mini savory zeppole with pecorino cream for other occasions too; they are, in fact, excellent as finger food appetizers.
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Medium
- Preparation time: 50 Minutes
- Portions: 28
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Father's Day
Ingredients
- 1.7 cups Water
- 5 oz Butter
- 2.25 cups All-purpose flour
- 0.07 oz Fine salt
- 14 oz Whole eggs (medium)
- 14 oz Cream cheese
- 1.75 oz Pecorino Romano
- to taste Black pepper
- to taste Nutmeg
- to taste Chives
- 14 Cherry tomatoes
Preparation
1) Prepare the choux pastry. In a pot, place the water, salt, and butter. As soon as the butter completely melts and the water begins to simmer, add the flour all at once, lower the heat, and immediately stir with a wooden spoon. A dough ball will form, which we will let cook for about 2-3 minutes, continuing to stir and ensuring no raw flour lumps remain inside the mass. The mass will almost immediately detach from the sides of the pot. Turn off the heat and let it cool slightly.
2) Crack the eggs into a bowl and weigh them (without mixing them, please). Once the dough is lukewarm, begin adding one egg at a time (using a spoon) and stir until it is completely absorbed; then, you can add the next egg, and so on. You should obtain a creamy and sufficiently dense mixture to draw circles of choux pastry that won’t slide off the baking sheet.
3) Cooking times and temperatures are based on my gas oven. Preheat the oven to 428°F and, in the meantime, line baking sheets with parchment paper. You can butter the sheets to keep the paper in place while using the pastry bag.
4) Fill a pastry bag with a star tip and create rings that are about 2 inches in diameter or larger if you prefer; space them a finger’s width apart.
5) Bake the first tray in the oven’s middle rack at 428°F for about 20-25 minutes, without ever opening the oven, until they double in size, become matte and golden, and detach from the paper. Remove them and bake the second tray.
6) In the meantime, we can focus on the pecorino cream. Grate the cheese and mix it with the cream cheese along with a pinch of nutmeg, pepper, and chives or any other preferred spice. Mix well and store in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap. If the cream is too firm, add one or two teaspoons of milk to soften it.
7) As soon as the zeppole are cold, we can decorate them or fill them to make them even tastier. Cut them in half and fill them with a bit of pecorino cream. Decorate each zeppole with half a cherry tomato. Inside our zeppole, we can add ham or artichokes or anything we desire.
