For recipe see Italy Revisited/Recipes/"Pastries"

There are many variations on this recipe. Notably, this is a modern take on the traditional zepolle recipe. Up the 19th century the recipes did not include any kind of custard or sweetened ricotta mixture, also the pastry doughs were fried, not baked (For older versions of the zepolle recipe see "Fritters"). However, nowadays most Italian pastry shops sell "zepolle di San Giuseppe" as cream puffs. In any case, this particular recipe I found easy to do and had a nice enough taste.Please note that in Molise's small towns and villages very few people did the cream puff version of "Zepolle di San Giuseppe" (Would have cost too much!). Well-to-do households, possibly those in the larger centers such the region's capital, Campobasso, might have indulged in such delicacies but few country folk did. Those who lived in the countryside generally made sweet fritters such as "scrapelle" [see Fritters] on the Feast Day of Saint Joseph. Cream puffs were reserved for weddings and baptisms. Nonetheless, most Italian-Canadians, regardless of whether they were born in small Southern Italian villages or in large cities now purchase "Zepolle di San Giuseppe" at their local pastry shops for the San Giuseppe's feast day. Photo: by the contributor.

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