Today is St. Joseph’s Feast Day. For Italians, well he’s even bigger than St. Patrick is for the Irish. In his honor, I naturally had to cook Italian food for dinner but the big story is I made San Giuseppe pastry.
Today this is going to be a recipe blog because I’m going to share that recipe. Depending on what part of Italy you go to, they have different things for San Giuseppe pastry. There was the great debate here about what is referred to as zeppole & sfingi. Basically, though, it’s the same pastry with the only difference being the filling. So, first let’s get to the puff pastry, which can also be used to make cream puffs.
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1 cup sifted flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees
Melt the butter in boiling water. Add flour and salt all at once. Stir and cook until mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each.
Form your little puffs about 2″ in diameter, 2″ apart on greased cookie sheets. (They are going to get about double in size when they cook.)
Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 300 and cook for an additional 20 – 25 minutes. Remove from sheets, cool and fill.
I filled mine with cannoli cream because that is what Frank & Theresa like:
I had initially made the cannoli cream the authentic way. It doesn’t taste like the cannoli cream you get in the bakery, though. Thanks to my sister & Google, I found one that I modified a bit and came up with a cannoli cream that came very close:
1/2 lb. ricotta
1/2 cup sifted confectioner’s sugar
4 tablespoons corn starch
2/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Stir cornstarch into the milk. Add the sugar and cook until thickened. Cover with plastic wrap so it doesn’t harden on top and cool. Add the ricotta and vanilla. (The cornstarch/milk mixture was quite thick. Janet had the idea of using a hand blender to mix it well with the ricotta and that worked out rather nicely.) If you prefer your filling to be sweeter, you can always add more sugar but it’s better to start out with less. You can alway add but taking out… that would be a problem.
And there you have it – San Giuseppe Pastry.
Oops – forgot 2 things:
1) You want the filling to cool first before filling the puffs so pop it in the refrigerator.
2) Don’t fill them up too far ahead of time or they’ll get all soggy.
The pastries also freeze well.
Now I have to wipe the drool off of the keyboard. I think I may just try those one day.
This. I want this.
San Giuseppe pastry doesn’t travel too well. How do you feel about these:
http://www.mangiabenepasta.com/rainbow_cookies.jpg
The more I think about it the more I want to try to make these, but with SH going out of town this week I can see myself eating them….every last one.
You forgot an essential ingredient in the cannoli cream – cinnamon – actually to get the real authentic taste the secret ingredient is one drop of cinnamon oil which is not easy to come by, but can be bought from King Arthur’s website (the makers of King Arthur Flour and lots of other hard to find baking ingredients).
[quote comment="4432"]You forgot an essential ingredient in the cannoli cream[/quote]
That is because 1) I do not have any cinnamon oil and 2) I posted that before the taste adjustments.
We are having more San Giuseppe pastry today with espresso.
But you still want all your blog fans, who are now going to make these delicious pastries, to know the secret ingredient
They can, of course subsitute regular old cinnamon, which most recipes call for, but only cinnamon oil will give you that taste that comes from the Italian Pastry store.
How about a home demo? I will supply the espresso and plates, plus all the ingredients and appliances.
Such a deal!
[quote comment="4435"]How about a home demo?[/quote]
Heh, I think that can be arranged.
Cinnamon oil is sold at pharmacies. I always buy mine at CVS or Rite Aide.
I got mine at King Arthur’s. Which is bad because I also got a bunch of other stuff…