DESSERTS · NAPLES

Zeppole di San Giuseppe: the pastry that arrives once a year.

Name: Zeppole di San Giuseppe: the pastry that arrives once a year.
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 12
Cuisine: Neapolitan
Ingredients: 200 ml water; 80 g unsalted butter; 1 pinch fine salt; 120 g type 00 flour; 4 eggs; 4 egg yolks (for pastry cream); 120 g sugar; 30 g cornstarch; 400 ml milk; 1 pod vanilla; 24 amarena cherries (in syrup); icing sugar (to dust)

APRIL 9, 2026· 3 MIN READ · ★★★★☆ 4.8

Made for the feast of Saint Joseph on 19 March, zeppole are choux pastry rings filled with pastry cream and topped with an amarena cherry. In Naples they are sold from every bar for exactly one week, then disappear until the following year.

INGREDIENTS

What you actually need.

Serves

NOTA BENE

Zeppole can also be fried — the fritte version is older than the baked one. Both are correct. The baked version is lighter; the fried version is better.

METHOD

6 steps, and one will define the dish.

Make the choux.

Boil water, butter, salt. Add flour all at once, stir until it leaves the sides. Off heat, beat in eggs one by one.

Pipe double rings.

On a lined tray, pipe concentric rings 8cm diameter.

Bake at 200°C for 25 minutes.

Do not open the oven. They must be golden and hollow.

Make pastry cream.

Whisk yolks, sugar, cornstarch. Heat milk with vanilla. Combine, cook until thick. Cool completely.

Fill with a piping bag.

Into and over the rings.

Top with amarena cherries.

Two per zeppola. Dust with icing sugar.

WHY IT WORKS — THE SCIENCE

The choux must be piped in a double ring.

In Naples, the feast of Saint Joseph on 19 March is measured not in religious observance but in zeppole. For exactly one week around that date, every bar, bakery, and pastry shop in the city fills its windows with these choux rings, crowned with pastry cream and a single amarena cherry in dark syrup. Then the week ends and they disappear until the following year.

The zeppola di San Giuseppe can be baked or fried. The baked version is lighter and more common in the city today. The fried version — older, richer, slightly transgressive — is the one that Neapolitan nonnas still make at home and consider superior. Both are correct. The argument between the two camps has been going on for at least a hundred years and will not be resolved here.

The choux ring

The zeppola is piped in a double concentric ring — two rings of choux one on top of the other — which creates a stable hollow structure that can hold a significant amount of pastry cream. The centre of the ring is not filled; the cream sits in it like a crown. This is not decorative. It is structural engineering applied to pastry.

“We make zeppole for one week a year. The queue starts at 6am. By 9am we have sold 400. This tells you everything about Naples that you need to know.”— ATTILIO BACHETTI, PASTICCERIA BACHETTI, NAPLES