The ultimate Neapolitan Christmas sweet, which, if made with baked biscuits can be a perfect dessert!
ingredients (cost about 8 € for the whole preparation)
for the dough
- 500 g pastry flour
- 2 g salt
- 4 g baking powder
- 2 g baking ammonia
- 50 g icing sugar
- 50 g butter
- 4 eggs
- zest from 2 oranges
- zest from 1 lemon
- 15 g liqueur (kumquat, orange, etc)
for the coating and garnish
- 200 g orange blossom honey
- 1 tbsp orange juice (optional)
- zest from 2 oranges
- 100 g candied citrus fruit peels
- A handful of pistachio
“Napule é mille culure”… Naples is thousand colors, sings Pino Daniele, in the anthem of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Struffoli, the dessert that the Neapolitans make to celebrate Christmas, are equaly colorful and beautiful!
Ιn our healthy DG version, we bake them instead of frying them, but we also use our own candied citrus fruit peels, from the tangerines, oranges and grapefruits we use for our breakfast juice, instead of industrial candied fruits.
We start by making the dough. We sift the flour with the baking powder, the baking ammonia, the icing sugar and the salt. We add the butter, already softened and cut into small dice and we rub it with the our fingers with the dry ingredients, until they become lightly sandy. We also add the zests. Then, we make a small hole in the middle and we add the eggs and the liqueur. We stir by hand to mix until the dough comes together. We form it into a rectangle, we wrap it with a clean towel or cling film and we let it rest in the fridge for an hour, at least.
We divide the dough into eight equal parts and we shape each part to a long -slim “sausage” about 1 cm in diameter, then we cut each sausage into small pieces of 1 cm.
We lay the pieces on baking trays lined with parchment and we bake them in a preheated oven at 150o C – static function (or 130o if using fan function) for about 14-15 minutes (11-12 minutes, if using the fan function). Once the struffoli are baked, we let them cool completely.
Meanwhile, we proceed to the honey coating.
We softly warm the honey, in a double boiler, until it becomes completely liquid. If it is very thick we can dilute with 1 tbsp of orange juice. Then we add the struffoli and the orange zest we stir them well, making sure to completely cover them with honey. We let them cool a bit, then we add the candied peels, cut in small dice and the pistachios, coarsely chopped and we mix again.
While the struffoli are still hot, we transfer them to a serving plate. If we want to make the crown shape, as in the photos, we place a glass upside down in the middle of the serving plate to help them stand and we arrange them with a spoon all around. Once the honey has cooled and solidified on the struffoli, we carefully remove the glass, we sprinkle with extra pistachios and we garnish with extra candied peels.
