Carnevale in Umbria: Struffoli, Cicerchie… and More

Week-end ballroom dancing, kaleidoscope parades of floats topped with costumed and masked ebullient children and adults – and myriads of enticing sweets – tell you Carnevale (Mardi Gras) has arrived in Italy,

Week-end ballroom dancing

Enjoy the photos of carri allegorici

[slick-slider design=”design-2″ category=”46″ show_content=”true” dots=”false” arrows=”true” autoplay=”true” sliderheight=”580″ autoplay_interval=”5000″ speed=”1000″]

..and what sweets!

Every pasticceria offers the most traditional Carnevale sweets: castagnole, brighelle, zeppole, and frappe’.

Castagnole

Brighelle

Zeppole

Frappe’ and zeppole

Frappe’ drizzled with alchermes

And yet, each pasticceria also adds its own creations to the Carnevale litany. I usually enjoy a morning espresso with a castagnola at Assisi’s Pasticceria/Bar Sensi but I stopped at Bar Barbarossa in Bastia Umbra this morning – and their own Carnevale creations were in the glass display case: huge castagnole, called “struffoli,” some dipped in the red alchermes liqueur, others in honey, and Nutella-topped cookies in the shape of Carnevale masks (others made with the red alchermes liqueur). Near the cookie masks, small cookies were topped with sprinkles reminiscent of the confetti flung off the floats. There were cicerchie, too: tiny round balls of dough, fried and then mounded together, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with “confetti.”
There was even a cake, topped with a mask and decorated with colorful frosting bows and ribbons.