Zeppole di San Giuseppe
Italian St. Joseph's Day choux pastry rings filled with vanilla custard cream and decorated with sour cherry jam and powdered sugar.
Ingredients
| 300 ml | water |
| 230 g | flour |
| 120 g | butter |
| 4 | eggs |
| a pinch | salt |
| 1 | zest of one lemon |
| 500 ml | milk (for cream) |
| 50 g | starch or flour (for cream) |
| 3 | egg yolks (for cream) |
| 120 g | sugar (for cream) |
| 1 packet | vanilla (for cream) |
Instructions
Dough:
- Put the water, butter, grated zest and salt in a small pot on the stove over low heat (so that some of the water does not evaporate at the moment of boiling). When it starts to boil, pour in the flour all at once and stir very energetically.
- Leave it on the heat briefly, until it starts to pull away from the sides of the pot and forms a smooth ball. Then remove and let it cool slightly. Add the eggs one by one, stirring well after each until smooth.
- Heat the oven to 180°C and, with the help of a piping bag, shape the dough into nests on baking paper.
- Bake at 180°C for about 45-50 minutes, but watch them at all times. They must get a very nice dark tan, otherwise they will collapse; when ready do not take them out immediately, but leave them a little longer in the open oven.
Cream: 5. Prepare the cream directly in the pot: first whisk the yolks with the sugar. Then add the flour and vanilla, and finally the milk. Put on the stove to boil, stirring constantly, and when it thickens remove and cool. 6. Then, with the piping bag, fill the holes in the middle of the finished zeppole (the author quite generously). 7. Decorate with sour cherry jam as a rule (the author, lacking it, used a spoonful of jam) and dust with powdered sugar.
Note: The same dough can also be made into eclairs shaped more like mini "Paris-Brest".