Struffoli: (n) tiny fried dough balls covered in honey and sprinkles
I have a fond memory of a giant golden bowl overflowing with struffoli and dripping with honey and those confetti circle sprinkles, or whatever they are called. My aunt used to make them for every holiday. It must have taken her a full 24 hours. Since it is possible that I will never experience that again, I decided to take matters into my own hands and try to adapt a non-vegan recipe to one without a thousand eggs in it! This was difficult and I'm not really sure how well it turned out. Couldn't have been that great, because they did not disappear like fried things or things covered in honey should. I thought they were pretty good, but my palate can not be trusted sometimes. Oh well! This is what happened:
3 1/2 cups of flour (I used white whole wheat, next time I will use regular!)
4 flax eggs (each flax egg is 1 Tb ground flax with 3 Tb water)
1 tsp rum
2 Tb of margarine (maybe I will try shortening next time?)
1 Tb sugar
zest of 1/2 a lemon
zest of 1/2 an orange
a pinch of salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vinegar
Coating:
1 pound of honey (I used local)
1 cup of sugar
a splash of lemon juice! I used water but discovered that this is better.
2 ounces of sprinkles or tiny candy coated almonds
3/4 cup of candied fruit
Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar and zest. Make your flax eggs and then add the margarine and other liquids to the food processor and whip until combined. Add the wet to the dry and fold into a dough that seems to be pretty stiff. Knead until workable. Put in a bowl, cover with a damp towel and let rest for an hour.
Funny story kind of: I made one batch with all the same ingredients except I cut the margarine into the flour as if you were making pastry dough. The second batch, I added the margarine into the food processor with the rest of the liquids. Then, I went to roll out the dough just like you were making gnocchi. Take scissors and cut off 1 inch eyeball sized pieces. Once I had all the pieces cut up, I realized I didn't distinguish between the first and second dough. OF COURSE there was a difference except who knows which was which. Woops! My instinct is to say that the dough that I cut the margarine into the flour for was better.
After you roll and cut, cover with damp towels as you work so the dough does not dry out. Heat a huge dutch oven full of olive oil until the right temperature, not smoking. Fry in batches until the little pieces puff up and lightly brown. The flax makes them a brown color whereas if you were using eggs, then they would be more golden. I might think about adding some annatto or turmeric to the dough next time just for the sake of presentation. When they are all fried, heat up the honey, sugar and water until slightly thinned out, dissolved and reduced. Pour all over the fried pieces and add the sprinkles. Now they are supposed to get all sticky to the point you can mold them into a shape but mine did not do that because I accidentally put too much water in my honey sauce. So many things went wrong here. We also overfried them. As someone just asked me, why am I even blogging about this??
Good question. I just do not know what the problem was because the flax actually did make them puff up when fried, and how bad can honey and sugar be? The problem is that I do not remember what they are supposed to taste like. Whatever, now I am pissed off even thinking about it!
This is what they are supposed to look like:
This is what actually occurred:
Key differences: I used the natural veggie colored sprinkles that taste weird and look boring.
Over fried! Too dense.
Maybe I shoulda made the pieces smaller!
My dough was not as smooth as pasta dough is supposed to be so it is possible that I needed more liquid. More alcohol? ANYBODY?? I need help on this one.
Anyways, it was fun. Next time then!
-me
3 1/2 cups of flour (I used white whole wheat, next time I will use regular!)
4 flax eggs (each flax egg is 1 Tb ground flax with 3 Tb water)
1 tsp rum
2 Tb of margarine (maybe I will try shortening next time?)
1 Tb sugar
zest of 1/2 a lemon
zest of 1/2 an orange
a pinch of salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vinegar
Coating:
1 pound of honey (I used local)
1 cup of sugar
a splash of lemon juice! I used water but discovered that this is better.
2 ounces of sprinkles or tiny candy coated almonds
3/4 cup of candied fruit
Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar and zest. Make your flax eggs and then add the margarine and other liquids to the food processor and whip until combined. Add the wet to the dry and fold into a dough that seems to be pretty stiff. Knead until workable. Put in a bowl, cover with a damp towel and let rest for an hour.
Funny story kind of: I made one batch with all the same ingredients except I cut the margarine into the flour as if you were making pastry dough. The second batch, I added the margarine into the food processor with the rest of the liquids. Then, I went to roll out the dough just like you were making gnocchi. Take scissors and cut off 1 inch eyeball sized pieces. Once I had all the pieces cut up, I realized I didn't distinguish between the first and second dough. OF COURSE there was a difference except who knows which was which. Woops! My instinct is to say that the dough that I cut the margarine into the flour for was better.
After you roll and cut, cover with damp towels as you work so the dough does not dry out. Heat a huge dutch oven full of olive oil until the right temperature, not smoking. Fry in batches until the little pieces puff up and lightly brown. The flax makes them a brown color whereas if you were using eggs, then they would be more golden. I might think about adding some annatto or turmeric to the dough next time just for the sake of presentation. When they are all fried, heat up the honey, sugar and water until slightly thinned out, dissolved and reduced. Pour all over the fried pieces and add the sprinkles. Now they are supposed to get all sticky to the point you can mold them into a shape but mine did not do that because I accidentally put too much water in my honey sauce. So many things went wrong here. We also overfried them. As someone just asked me, why am I even blogging about this??
Good question. I just do not know what the problem was because the flax actually did make them puff up when fried, and how bad can honey and sugar be? The problem is that I do not remember what they are supposed to taste like. Whatever, now I am pissed off even thinking about it!
This is what they are supposed to look like:
This is what actually occurred:
Key differences: I used the natural veggie colored sprinkles that taste weird and look boring.
Over fried! Too dense.
Maybe I shoulda made the pieces smaller!
My dough was not as smooth as pasta dough is supposed to be so it is possible that I needed more liquid. More alcohol? ANYBODY?? I need help on this one.
Anyways, it was fun. Next time then!
-me
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