Test Run: Zeppoli con Ciocalatta Calda (Led Zeppole)

Things that went well:

The hot chocolate went off without a hitch and came out perfectly, it is thick, smooth, and luscious! It thickened perfectly and turned out amazing!

Things we discovered/What we will do differently next time:

When frying the zeppole, keep the basket submerged in the oil. Use the spatula like slotted spoon to drop the dough in. Fry dough for ~3 minutes.

Semi-sweet chocolate tastes delicious in this recipe and we are glad we did not have dark chocolate to use, and will use semi-sweet chocolate from now on!

We started hours before the lab, at 11AM, to make the dough! The dough used:

-2 cups of flour

-1 packet of yeast

-1 cup warm water

-a pinch of salt.

We combined these ingredients in a bowl and mixed it until everything was well incorporated. Then we put it in the fridge to rise until 2, when lab began.

Waiting to rise up!

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First, we made the Ciocolatta Calda. To make this, we started by measuring out 4 and ½ ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips, the recipe called for dark chocolate, but as we did not have any available, we improvised! And, actually we liked this more!

Next, we made our cornstarch slurry, we mixed ¼ cup of milk with 1 and ½ teaspoons of cornstarch. We took ¾ cup of milk and added 1 cup of heavy cream and 4 tablespoons of granulated sugar and heated it over medium low heat until bubbles formed around the edge of the pot. We then added the cornstarch slurry and let it thicken for about a minute, before adding the semi-sweet chocolate chips. We let this thicken for about 5 minutes and took it off the heat and transferred it to our glass measuring cup, and let it sit there and thicken while we made our zeppoli!

Adding the cornstarch slurry to the mix

Delicious

Once the hot chocolate was finished, we began with our zeppole! We filled the deep frier to the appropriate limit and used an ice cream scoop to make perfectly sized balls. At first we were lifting the fryer basket out of the oil and placing the dough in, but after a single batch made this way, we discovered that this led the zeppole to get stuck to the bottom of the basket and become difficult to remove. The next method we tried worked better: we left the basket submerged in oil and dropped the dough onto a slotted spoon. We then were able to shake the dough into the oil. Dough put in the oil this way ended up not getting stuck to the basket and turning into perfect zeppole! We let the zeppole fry for about 3 minutes until they were golden, and then took them out to drain them before dusting them with powdered sugar.

Frying away!

Golden perfection!

DONE!!!

Basic Chemical Analysis:

1. Yeast! Yeast was used to rise the dough to create soft and pillowy zeppole. It is the rising agent used in this recipe.
2. Thickening. Cornstarch was used as a thicken agent in the Italian hot chocolate. Combining the cornstarch with the water in the milk allowed for the starch and water to intermingle and become trapped, creating a more viscous liquid.
3. Fat/frying. Fat in the form of vegetable oil was used to fry the zeppole. Food added to hot oil dehydrates, and via Malliard reactions, sugars and proteins break down to create the delicious flavor! (Work cited: http://www.finecooking.com/article/the-science-of-frying)