Today’s sweet recipe: grandma’s classic fried chiacchiere.

Crunchy, crumbly, bubbly, and dry. These are exactly the chiacchiere my grandma used to make, a recipe passed down from mother to daughter and handwritten in her dessert notebook.

Few and simple ingredients, including eggs, flour, and seed oil, combined together and then rolled out thinly and fried. She liked them without too many frills, so she left them rectangular without making bows or knots, and sprinkled just a light dusting of powdered sugar.

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

In my region, Abruzzo, we call them chiacchiere, an old pastry chef friend of mine told me that this name was given because when you eat them, they crunch and make noise like when you chat.

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

Ingredients for Grandma’s Classic Chiacchiere

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

Tools

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

Let’s Begin!

On a work surface, pour the flour and make a well in the center to create a fountain where we will put the other ingredients, then add the sugar, whole egg, brandy, wine, three or four drops of lemon, and a zest of lemon peel. Begin mixing the ingredients inside the flour with a fork, gradually incorporating the flour. When the dough starts to come together, we can knead it with our hands until obtaining 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 again and divide it into three or four parts. Lightly dust the work surface with a little flour and start rolling out a portion of the dough. It should be rolled out very thinly, ideally 1 mm (0.04 inches) thick. This can be done with a rolling pin or a pasta machine, the ‘nonna papera.’
After rolling out the dough, you can cut it into rectangles with the fluted 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 all the dough is used up.
In a frying pan or deep fryer, add seed oil and wait for it to heat up. Then fry our carnival sweets, a few at a time, flipping them quickly because, being thin, they cook fast. Drain on a paper towel and let cool.
Dust with powdered sugar and enjoy while crispy. Before finishing them, snap a photo of your chiacchiere and post it on social media tagging me (una riccia che pasticcia instagram and facebook) and let me know if yours “chat” too.