Castagnole alla Romana (Italian Fritters)

Mardi Gras is tomorrow, so if you’re looking for a good excuse to eat something nice and greasy and nice and sweet (but delicious nonetheless), this is the time! Personally, I’m not in the habit of making doughnuts or the like, but that’s going to have to change.

It’s so simple to make and so good!!! Today, it’s not a doughnut recipe I’m offering you but a recipe that will take you on a little journey… castagnole alla romana. A recipe straight from Italy, as its name suggests.

Why a recipe from elsewhere? As a little side story, I take part in a photo/pastry challenge on Instagram every month and for February, we chose the theme “Mardi Gras around the world”. And to make things a bit trickier, we had to meet 2 constraints: the presence of a spice in the pastry and movement in the food photo. So there I was looking for recipes from elsewhere and after hesitating between beaver tails (which I ended up making too) and Berliner doughnuts, I finally opted for these little Italian treats which look like little round doughnuts but aren’t really.

Are Castagnole doughnuts?

These Castagnole alla romana are little treats that are fried in oil and for that reason, you could say they’re doughnuts. But actually, not at all. It isn’t a doughnut dough. Here, we don’t use baker’s yeast but baking powder, so no need for a first 2-hour rise and a second rise just as long. 15 to 30 minutes are enough before cooking them. Suffice to say that if you fancy some little “doughnuts” for an afternoon snack in 1 hour, it’s entirely possible!

But I’d rather warn you, the texture is very different from a doughnut. The outside is crispy and the inside is soft, but not soft like a doughnut. I’d say more like a loaf cake. Yes, I know, it sounds odd put like that. It makes a change from the traditional doughnut, it’s good and it didn’t last long at home. I had coated them in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon (that’s the spice I’d chosen for the challenge) but you can very well coat them in icing sugar as in the north of Italy or even fill them with pastry cream or chocolate spread if you’re the greedy type.

How do you make Castagnole alla romana?

I didn’t even use my stand mixer to make this recipe. It’s simple and quick to make, just with a bit of elbow grease. You just mix the flour with the baking powder and sugar then add the eggs, lemon zest and soft butter. Then, add the salt and a little alcohol if you wish (I used rum, but you could also use limoncello or another spirit). If you don’t like alcohol or don’t want to add any, simply replace it with milk.

Then mix with a whisk or a fork first, then knead a little by hand. The dough needs to be homogeneous but there’s no point kneading it for too long. In the recipe I followed, it said to leave the ball of dough to rest for 15 to 30 minutes but I also saw another recipe that didn’t say to rest the dough… it depends on how impatient you are! Then you need to form small balls of dough and like any “doughnut”, you simply fry them in oil. Cooking takes a tiny bit longer than with a doughnut since you have to make sure the outside doesn’t cook too fast. For that, watch the oil temperature. I preferred to cook them at 170°C so that the inside is properly cooked and the outside is nicely golden as it should be.