Carnival chatters with Strega, crunchy, bubbly, and melt-in-your-mouth, very easy to make, without yeast, with eggs, flour, a little butter, and a little sugar for a perfect result. I love chatters and every year I like to try them in many different versions. Today I wanted to try them with alchermes but then, since I had bought a bottle of Strega liqueur some time ago to use for desserts, on the advice of my sister, who says it gives a delicious fragrance to desserts, even though she recommended it for cakes and donuts I wanted to try it with the chatters, I’m not sure how much the taste of Strega came through in the end, but I can assure you they were delicious, by the time I finished taking two photos they were already gone, my niece was waiting with hunger, and at the end of the party we devoured half of them with the intention of making them again soon because chatters are irresistible and you can’t stop at one. In the meantime, I’ll give you the recipe for these, I’m sure I’ll try others in the coming days, I’ll also share the other versions, all delicious, even without eggs. You can find this recipe in the collection Carnival desserts.
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Very economical
- Rest time: 20 Minutes
- Preparation time: 40 Minutes
- Portions: for 6 people (about 30 chatters)
- Cooking methods: Frying
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Carnival
Ingredients for carnival chatters with Strega
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 tbsp cold butter
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 2 tbsp Strega liqueur
- to taste vanilla
- 2 medium eggs
- flour for working
- to taste powdered vanilla sugar
- sunflower seed oil for frying
Tools for preparing carnival chatters with Strega
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Pasta machine
- 1 Cutting wheel
- 1 Pan
- 1 Tongs
- 4 Absorbent paper
- 1 Tray
Steps to prepare carnival chatters with Strega
Let’s start preparing the dough for the chatters. It’s basically a shortcrust pastry. To prepare it quickly, start working butter and sugar in a bowl, then add flour to get a crumbly mixture, at this point add eggs, liqueur, and vanilla and knead to obtain a smooth and elastic dough. Unlike usual shortcrust pastry, this time we work it a little more to make it elastic and roll it out thinly without breaking. Let it rest for at least 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, set up the pasta machine, I have a manual one so I have to attach it to a table or the kitchen counter. So it takes a little time to set it up. Alternatively, we have to work on a surface with a rolling pin. Also, prepare a nice clean work surface where to place the thin sheets of our carnival chatters as we roll them out, for example, the kitchen table. No need to put flour at the base.
Put a little flour in a bowl that we will use to roll out the thin sheets without sticking.
Take our dough, work it a little more, if it is soft we can add a little flour, on the contrary, but we notice this even earlier, if too hard we can add more liquids.
Divide the dough into 6 parts. Start rolling out the first one, flouring it well, and passing it through the pasta machine with open rollers, then at number one, pass it at number one several times, folding the pasta, and using flour if necessary, to obtain a uniform, smooth, and regular sheet, then as we roll it out the other times we close the rollers one level at a time, stopping at the penultimate, mine goes from 1 to 6 I stop at 5. Since I used flour to roll it out, no more flour is needed when I place them on the surface.
With a toothed or smooth wheel, cut all our chatters into rectangles or any shape we want. Leave on the surface while preparing for cooking.
Immediately put plenty of oil to heat in a wide thick pan, so it holds the temperature constant better. Then prepare a tray with absorbent paper.
When the oil has reached about 340-355°F, we can start frying our chatters, you will immediately see many bubbles forming, which is a great sign, we turn them to get the perfect shape and then let them brown in the hot oil, at that point they are ready, we drain them, and dry on absorbent paper, without overlapping them, indeed layer by layer put some absorbent paper. Continue until finished.
Then place the dried chatters on a tray to form a layer, and sprinkle with powdered sugar, put another layer and add more powdered sugar and so on. At this point, our carnival chatters with Strega are ready to enjoy, assuming there are any left, mine are already well gone by now. I had prepared some with dark chocolate on top as well, they literally went like hotcakes, my niece kept saying now I taste, taste she, taste I, and not finished, chatters are like that, one pulls the other.
