Zeppole

Two types

Zeppole di San Giuseppe — the baked or fried pastry made for St. Joseph’s Day (March 19, Father’s Day in Italy). These are choux-dough rings or S-shapes, either deep-fried or baked, filled with pastry cream (crema pasticciera) and topped with a sour cherry or candied cherry. They appear in bakeries across Italy from late February through March 19.

Zeppole fritte — simpler fried dough balls made from yeasted dough, served plain with powdered sugar at street fairs (sagre), Christmas markets, and carnivals. These are the more ancient form — straightforward fried dough that traces back to ancient Roman globuli (honey-fried dough balls).

St. Joseph’s Day tradition

The connection to St. Joseph is specific to southern Italian tradition. Historically, when Sicily faced famine in the Middle Ages, people prayed to St. Joseph; when the famine lifted, they celebrated on his feast day with elaborate sweets including zeppole. The tradition of giving away sweets on this day to the poor persists in Sicilian-American communities.

Italian-American fairs

At Italian-American street fairs across the US — particularly in New York and New Jersey — zeppole are the iconic fried dough sold by vendors: plain balls of yeasted dough, fried to order, shaken in a paper bag with powdered sugar. This simpler version lacks the pastry cream filling of the Neapolitan St. Joseph’s tradition but has become the most widely recognised version internationally.