Carnival desserts: 3 ideas with superfoods

I Carnival sweets are one of the delights of the month of February: traditional, delicious, often rich in flavor and calories, they are a temptation that is difficult to give up!

There is nothing wrong with indulging in a fried treat or one stuffed with sweet creams, every now and then. If you want to try to create slightly healthier or vegetal versions of typical Carnival desserts, let's try to give you some ideas.

3 revisited recipes of Carnival desserts

The addition of our superfoods to preparations can make recipes richer in terms of the presence of micronutrients. Cooking in the oven, instead of immersing it in boiling oil, can help make your delicacies more digestible, without losing flavour.

Coconut oil frappe

What are they called in your area? These crunchy delights are named with a thousand regional declinations: frappe in Lazio, chiacchiere in various regions of the South, marvels in Sicily, lies in Liguria and Piedmont, crostoli in Friuli, galani in Veneto...

It is said that they were born as street food, distributed to the crowd during the Saturnalia, ancient Roman festivals.

If you want to prepare a truly fragrant and original version, our advice is to replace the butter with coconut oil.

Ingredients

• 200g Flour
• 30g coconut oil
• 1 egg (can be omitted for a vegan version)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• lemon zest
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

Just mix all the ingredients and then cut the resulting dough into long jagged strips, which can then be cooked in the oven or in the air fryer for a lighter effect.

And of course, sprinkled with plenty of icing sugar before serving!

Apple fritters with rosehip jam

Even the Carnival pancakes have different names depending on the areas and the process used to obtain them. Bignole, castagnole, zeppole, fritoe…

The ingredients are very simple: butter or coconut oil, flour, eggs, milk, lemon zest, to obtain a rich batter, to be fried by spoonfuls in boiling oil or to swell in the oven for a light result.

If you want, you can add diced apples, raisins or dried fruit to the dough to make them even more nutritious!

Or, if you have a real sweet tooth, you can make a stuffed version: once cooked, they should be filled either by cutting them in half or with a dessert syringe, with custard, jams and much more.

The perfect match? Sweet apple fritters served with apleasantly sour jam like rosehip jam: we leave you the recipe here.

Coriander biscuits with matcha tea and other superfoods

What's happier than lots of colorful biscuits to munch on?

Just add about 2 teaspoons of Matcha Culinario powder to your patented and traditional shortcrust pastry recipe, also in the vegan version, and then have fun with the decorations: contrasting white chocolate nuggets, or colored sprinkles, sugar sprinkles...

Or use different vegetable powders to color the biscuit doughs in many different shades: pink-purple with the açai, brown with the cocoa, almost light blue with the spirulina. This way, you will create incredible coriander cookies!

We leave you our secrets for Matcha shortcrust pastry. The additional idea is, obviously, to give the biscuits a shape that recalls the period: Carnival masks, for example!