Carnival Sweet Fritters
Instructions
Crunchy fried sweets traditionally made during Carnival. From GialloZafferano, Italy's #1 food website.
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What's the dessert you think of when you think of Carnevale? Chiacchiere! Cenci, gallani, crostole, frappe, these are some of the names this sweet is called in the different regions of Italy. Let's see what ingredients we'll need to make them.
Let's make our Chiacchiere.
In a large bowl, sift the flour together with the baking powder. Now add all of the ingredients. Begin with a pinch of salt, now the sugar, the butter, the liqueur and vanilla, and the eggs. Now knead it together until everything is mixed together
Now that everything has come together, continue to knead on a worktop. Lightly flour the surface to prevent sticking, and knead for about 5-10 minutes or until the dough is well mixed and completely smooth.
The dough for the chiacchiere is ready. See, it's quite smooth. Now just put it into some plastic wrap and let it rise for a half an hour in a cool and dry place, but not in the fridge.
After the dough has rested, take it out and divide it into 4 equal pieces of about 9 oz each. While you're rolling out one, the others should remain in plastic wrap to keep them from drying out. Another important thing is to work out the dough in a room that's free of drafts and sources of heat because the dough will dry out in these conditions. Now, we'll roll out the dough using a pasta machine.
To roll out the dough, use a fixture for pasta sheets which can be connected to an electric mixer, or you can simply use the classic pasta machine with a crank which you can easily find in houseware shops. The rollers come in different thicknesses. We'll be using 3 of them, the largest, the next one down and finally one with a measure of 1/10 of an inch thick which will be the thickness of our dough for the chiacchiere. The first two passes serve for kneading the dough thinner, while the final pass, as we said, is for the final product. When you pass the dough through the rollers, be sure that it doesn't break up and that holes don't form in the dough that's coming out. If this happens, knead the dough back into a ball and repeat until it comes out of the machine smooth and compact. Let's see how to do it.
Let's begin with the widest setting. Start up the machine and begin. Fold the sheet into 3rds, turn it and go again.
Turn the dial setting to the middle thickness. You should cut the dough at this point in half or otherwise the dough will become prohibitively long. Cut it in two and now let's continue like we did before.
Put some oil into a large pan. The chiacchiere should float while frying. Now let's cut our chiacchiere. With either a crimped or smooth roller, make rectangles. To make the classic shape, cut two small lines into the centre like this. You can of course make any shape you'd like, but these are the traditional shape.
To fry the chiacchere bring a good amount of oil to a temperature of at maximum 350 degrees F. Ideally the temperature will be around 340-350. Now, let's fry them. As you can see, they really be any shape you'd like because they won't fry up in a perfect shape. It's enough to cut them into even sizes, make the cuts in the centre and fry them. You won't need to get rid of any misshapen ones.
And here are our lovely, fragrant chiacchere. Sprinkle them generously with powdered sugar and now happy carnevale to everyone from Sonia and GialloZafferano.
