Struffoli (Angelina’s Honey Balls)

Frank22 December 2017dessert/dolci, Naples and Campania83 Comments

Struffoli, small balls of dough fried and then covered in honey, is the quintessential Christmas sweet of Naples and its region of Campania. Although I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, it is very dear to my heart; it was one of nonna Angelina’s signature dishes, and it never failed to make an appearance each year around the holidays. In our family they were known as ‘Nana’s honey balls’.

As a child I took the name literally, and until I moved to Italy, I thought that they were my grandmother’s invention. You can imagine my surprise then, when, on vacation on the Amalfi coast one year, I peered into the window of a pasticceria and saw… Nana’s honey balls! Where on earth, I thought to myself, had they gotten the recipe? Well, I soon enough learned that Nana’s secret recipe was actually no secret at all. In fact, the recipe is ancient, dating all the way back to the Greeks who settled southern Italy, founding, among other things the city of Naples or Neapolis, meaning ‘new city’ in Greek.

In any event, these little babies are actually quite simple to make, but, like many old-fashioned dishes, they require a bit of time and tender loving care.

Ingredients

For a plateful of stuffoli

For the dough:

300g (3 cups) flour
3 eggs
Butter, a walnut-sized chunk or 1 Tb. oil
Anisette, rum or other spirit (optional)
Zest of one lemon or orange, or both
Salt, a small pinch
A pinch of baking powder (optional)
A heaping spoonful of sugar (optional)

For frying:

Vegetable or olive oil for frying

For dressing the balls:

300g (1 medium jar) honey
Candied cherries, orange peel and citron (optional)
Confettini or candied sprinkles preferably of the small round nonpareil variety

Directions

Making the Dough

You begin by making dough with the first six ingredients. This was traditionally done by making what the Italians call a fontana, or fountain of flour, in the middle of which you make a well for other ingredients, then slowly incorporating the flour into the well by hand as you beat the eggs and other liquid ingredients with a fork. These days, however, a stand mixer makes short work of this. Just put in your flour, then the other ingredients, and mix until you get a nice dough, just as if you were making pasta.

Once the ingredients have formed a smooth dough, form it into a ball and wrap it in plastic wrap. Let the dough rest for a good 30 minutes or so.

Forming the struffoli

After the dough has rested, take a handful of it at a time and roll it into a ball. Then roll each ball out into a ‘log’ as if you were making gnocchi, pulling on the ends from time to time stretch it out thinner, until it’s about the thickness of your little finger. (If you can manage it, that it. Otherwise as close to that as you can get). Then cut the logs into short lengths, again just like you are making gnocchi, only much smaller.

Place the little pieces on a floured towel as you work, making sure that they are all in a single layer so they don’t stick. Just before proceeding to the next step, you grab the ends of the towel and swish the balls around to lightly flour them.

Frying

Heat the oil in a large pan. You want lots of oil so the little balls can deep fry in it. When the oil is nice and hot, but not boiling, plunge the dough balls into the oil a handful at a time. The oil will immediately bubble up vigorously.

Fry the dough balls until they are lightly browned. Drain on paper towels while you proceed to the next step.

Finishing the struffoli

Now, in an ample sauté pan or saucier or wok large enough to hold all of the dough balls, gently heat the honey until it liquifies. Add the stuffoli, stir or toss them gently to coat. Allow the struffoli to soak up the honey for a few minutes. If using the candied fruit (see Notes below) you will want to add them at this point.

Remove your struffoli from the pan with a slotted spoon and arrange them on a plate. It is common to arrange them in a ciambella or ring, but you can also simply pile them high into a little ‘Mount Vesuvius’. Let me cool, then decorate with some more candied fruit if you like Then sprinkle your pile with the sprinkles.

Stuffoli can be eaten immediately, but improve with age.

Notes on Struffoli

Although it takes a few steps, the recipe is really pretty much foolproof. The only trick, the extent there is one, is to make your struffoli as small as you can manage, as that will mean more honey flavor and less chance of an undercooked middle.

Variations

There are quite a few variations on the dish, although none that drastically change its character. Like many traditional recipes, the original fat for both making and frying the dough was strutto or lard, not oil. Today, it is more usual to use butter for the dough and vegetable or olive oil for frying. Not all recipes call for the liquor. And some recipes call for orange rather than lemon zest—or in the case of Jeanne Caròla Francesconi, both. Francesconi also recommends adding a spoonful of sugar to the dough.

The ratio of egg to flour also varies from recipe to recipe. Here I have indicated the same ‘golden rule’ as for pasta dough: 1 egg per 100g (1 cup) of flour. But recipes may call for more or less egg, some for an extra yolk for color and richness. Some recipes omit the fat from the dough—be it butter, oil or lard—altogether, while others call for significantly more fat than indicated here. The optional pinch of baking powder lightens the honey balls considerably, but is obviously a modern permutation.

Old school recipes all call for candied fruits, in particular candied orange peels. But sadly they’re not at all easy to find these days, except for cherries. (I lucked out this year!) And according to Francesconi, the really old fashioned recipe, which she dubs gli stuffoli della bisnonna, or Great-Grandmother’s Honey Balls, calls for decorating the stuffoli with peeled almonds and hazelnuts, too, as well as those sugar coated almonds that some of us of a certain age may remember were often given out as wedding favors back in the day.

A family story…

To tell you the truth, struffoli were not all that popular among the younger generation of my family. I like them well enough, but one of my sisters actively despised them. Being a natural born politician, however, that didn’t stop her from complimenting our grandmother profusely one Christmas. Well, our ever thoughtful grandmother took note and the following Christmas brought a double batch of her ‘honey balls’, one for the family as usual, and another just for my sister, since she loved them so much! You should have seen the look on my sister’s face as Angelina handed her that enormous second bag full of struffoli…

NB: This recipe was first posted in December 2010 and updated in December 2017.

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