BRITTLE FLANCATI, DOUGH FRITTERS

This traditional sweet dish is usually made for Carnival Season together with Carnival doughnats and Carnival sweet mice.

Brittle Flancati

It is an old belief that table should be full of greasy and sweet dishes during the Carnival Season. In that way the farmers will have a good harvest. Today we try to avoid this kind of food for health reasons, but for these few days during the Carnival, we make some exceptions. As we used to say: “a little sin is not a sin".

Brittle flancati are actually fritters made of dough and sprinkled with powdered sugar when still hot.

Of course they are many different recipes for making flancati. I chose the one that comes in small quantity and is really tasty. So you can eat them all fresh and not too many! 

Ingredients for the dough:

150 g of flour

30 g of sugar / you can skip this

1 tbsp of sour cream

30 g of butter

3 egg yolks

lemon zest

salt

1 tbsp of wine

Put the ingredients in a bowl

Knead a dough

You wil also need:

Oil or lard for deep frying

Powdered sugar (icing sugar)

Preparation:

Put flour with all other ingredients in a bowl and knead into a nice dough. It should be softer than the dough for pasta. You can also make it in a food processor but finish it with your hands. Put aside to rest for at least 30minutes.

Before frying, roll out the dough very thin, like for pasta. Cut out flancati. You can cut the dough into stripes or larger pieces and make more cuts inside - see the photo below.

Cutting out flancati

Twist and bend to various shapes

Before putting them into oil, bend and twist these stripes to get characteristic shapes.  Deep fry in hot oil until very light colour. Put on the napkin to absorb excessive oil and then sprinkle with powdered (icing) sugar.

Remowing excessive oil

Sprinkle with sugar

If you don't like sweets or are avoiding sugar, you can easily make a savoury version. Skip sugar in the recipe and sprinkle with spices - salt, chilli, curry... whatever you like best. 

Serve fresh with tea or coffee or wine

Savory Flancati goes well also with beer

See more photos on this LINK!