Italian Sicilian Saint Joseph Ricotta Fritters | Sfince di San Giuseppe
Updated: Oct 24
Sfince di San Giuseppe are the fried ricotta pastries that Palermo prepares for the feast of Saint Joseph on March 19, and they are one of the very few Sicilian desserts still tied to a single day of the calendar. A sfincia is a ball of choux paste dropped into hot oil rather than baked: irregular on the outside, golden and blistered, hollow and almost custard soft within. It is split once cool and filled with sweetened sheep milk ricotta, then finished with a candied cherry, chopped Bronte pistachio and a strip of candied orange peel.
Technically it asks more than it looks. Fried choux gets no slow oven heat to set a crust, so the shell has to inflate before the surface closes, and that single window governs the oil temperature, the moment the eggs go into the cooked paste and the moment the pastry is turned. The ricotta has rules of its own: drain it, sieve it, keep it cold, fill at the last second.
Serves 4. Prep: 40 minutes. Rest: 45 minutes. Cook: 25 minutes. Assembly: 15 minutes. Total: about 2 hours 5 minutes, plus 24 hours draining the ricotta.
The Story
In Sicily the feast of Saint Joseph is not only a religious date, it is a table. The tavolate di San Giuseppe, the altars of Saint Joseph, are still built in towns across the island: families who received a grace during the year cook for days, cover a table with bread, vegetables, citrus and sweets, and invite the poor of the neighbourhood to eat first, in the roles of the Holy Family. March 19 falls in Lent, so the food is meatless, and the sweets at the end carry the weight of the celebration.
The name is older than the recipe. Sfincia comes from the Arabic isfanj, the word for a sponge shaped fritter soaked in honey that Arab cooks brought to Sicily, and the same root travelled through Latin as spongia. For centuries a sfincia was exactly that: fried dough, honey, nothing more.
The version with the ricotta cream is credited in Palermo to the nuns of the convent of the Stigmata, who in the eighteenth century reworked the humble fritter into a pastry rich enough for a feast day, filling it with sweetened sheep milk ricotta, candied fruit and chocolate. It is the same grammar as the cannolo and the cassata, and it belongs to the same city. Today the sfincia di San Giuseppe sits on the register of traditional Sicilian food products, and in the week before March 19 the pastry shops of Palermo measure their days in trays of them.
Ingredients
For the choux paste
Water, 1 cup (240 ml)
Unsalted butter, 3 tablespoons (45 g)
Granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon (12 g)
Fine sea salt, 1/4 teaspoon (1.5 g)
All purpose flour, 1 cup (125 g)
Large eggs, 4 (about 7 oz or 200 g shelled)
Neutral frying oil such as peanut or sunflower, about 6 cups (1.4 liters)
For the ricotta cream
Sheep milk ricotta, drained, 2 cups (500 g)
Powdered sugar, 1/2 cup (60 g)
Dark chocolate at 60 percent, finely chopped, 1/4 cup (45 g)
Candied orange peel, finely diced, 2 tablespoons (25 g)
Vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml)
Ground cinnamon, 1 pinch
For the pistachio crumble
Shelled Bronte pistachios, 1/2 cup (65 g)
Almond flour, 1/4 cup (25 g)
Granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons (25 g)
Unsalted butter, 2 tablespoons (30 g)
Fine sea salt, 1 pinch
For the orange sauce
Fresh orange juice, 3/4 cup (180 ml)
Fresh lemon juice, 1 tablespoon (15 ml)
Granulated sugar, 3 tablespoons (38 g)
Cornstarch, 1 teaspoon (3 g)
Unsalted butter, 1 tablespoon (15 g)
For finishing
Candied cherries, 4
Candied orange peel in strips, 2 tablespoons (25 g)
Chopped pistachios, 2 tablespoons (16 g)
Dark chocolate shavings, 1 tablespoon (10 g)
Powdered sugar for dusting, 1 tablespoon (8 g)
Fresh orange zest, from 1 orange
Preparation
Draining and sieving the ricotta
Begin a full day ahead. Set the ricotta in a fine mesh sieve over a bowl, cover it and leave it in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Even a curd that looks firm will release several tablespoons of whey overnight. Discard that liquid. The next morning, push the drained ricotta through the sieve twice together with the powdered sugar, working with a spatula and never with a blender. Fold in the chopped chocolate, candied orange, vanilla and cinnamon, then refrigerate the cream until service.
Cooking the panata
Bring the water, butter, sugar and salt to a boil in a heavy saucepan with a light coloured bottom, making sure the butter has melted completely before the liquid reaches the boil so the fat stays evenly dispersed. Add all the flour at once and beat hard with a wooden spoon until the mixture gathers into a single ball. Keep it moving over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, until a thin white veil of cooked starch films the bottom of the pan. That film, not the clock, tells you the paste is ready.
Adding the eggs and resting the paste
Spread the paste in a wide bowl and let it fall below 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) before an egg goes anywhere near it, which takes roughly 8 to 10 minutes with occasional stirring. Egg protein begins to set above that point, and scrambled egg in the paste means a shell that will not inflate. Beat in the eggs one at a time, waiting until each is fully absorbed and the mixture has come back together before adding the next. The finished paste should fall from the spoon in a thick, glossy ribbon. Cover it and rest it 45 minutes at room temperature.
Frying the sfince
Pour the oil into a wide, deep pan to a depth of at least 3 inches (8 cm) and bring it to 320 degrees Fahrenheit (160 degrees Celsius). Shape each sfincia with two soup spoons, scooping about 1 1/2 tablespoons of paste and sliding it into the oil close to the surface. Fry no more than three at a time. For the first minute they sit low, then they swell, rise and roll over on their own once the underside has set. Never turn them by hand. When they are evenly puffed, raise the oil to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius) to colour them deep gold, then lift onto a rack.
Crumble, sauce and filling
Heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius). Chop the pistachios coarsely, rub them with the almond flour, sugar, butter and salt, and toast on a lined tray for 10 to 12 minutes until the smell turns nutty. Cool completely. For the sauce, whisk the cornstarch into the cold orange juice before any heat is applied, add the lemon juice and sugar, and cook over medium heat, whisking, until it coats a spoon, then whisk in the butter off the heat. Fill only when the guests are seated: slice each cool sfincia horizontally two thirds of the way up and pipe the cold ricotta cream generously into the base.
Plating and Presentation
Use a wide flat plate with a generous rim, white or a pale ceramic glaze, and chill it ten minutes before service so the ricotta holds its shape. Empty space is part of the composition, because a sfincia is an irregular object and reads as deliberate only when nothing crowds it.
Set the filled sfincia slightly off centre and rest its upper half to one side, leaning on the cream rather than lying flat on it, so the ricotta stays visible and the pastry keeps its height. Spoon a comma of orange sauce along one side of the plate, never underneath, where it would soften the base within a minute.
Place the pistachio crumble in one compact pile beside the pastry instead of scattering it: a single mound keeps the crunch concentrated for the spoon. Finish with the candied cherry pressed into the cream, a strip of candied orange, a few chocolate shavings, powdered sugar dusted on the pastry only, and orange zest grated over the plate at the last second.
Professional Technique
Everything technical here comes down to one fact: fried choux behaves differently from baked choux, and treating them alike is why most attempts fail. In an oven, dry heat dries the surface gradually while steam pushes outward from the centre, so the shell has minutes to expand before it sets. In oil the surface reaches frying temperature in seconds, and if it sets first the steam inside has nowhere to go. The sfincia stays small, dense and raw at the core.
The answer is a deliberately low first temperature. At 320 degrees Fahrenheit (160 degrees Celsius) the skin stays pliable long enough for the water trapped in the gelatinised starch network to turn to steam and stretch the pastry from within. Only once the shell is fully inflated does the oil go up to about 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius) to build colour and crispness. Two temperatures, in that order, are not a refinement. They are the recipe.
The eggs are the second variable: they supply the remaining water that becomes steam and the protein that locks the inflated shell in place, which is why they go in one at a time below 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius). And the sfince announce their own timing, rolling over when the base has set. That self turning moment is a structural signal, and it is the only turning instruction this recipe needs.
Texture and Moisture Control
The ricotta carries most of the moisture risk. Sheep milk curd arrives full of whey, and a cream built on undrained ricotta will weep into the shell and turn crisp pastry into sponge within the hour. Twenty four hours in a sieve removes that liquid, and sieving twice with the sugar rebuilds a smooth, dense cream without shearing the curd. A blender does the opposite: it warms the ricotta and releases the very whey you spent a day removing.
The shell is the mirror problem. A correct sfincia has a crisp outer skin and a soft, airy, almost custard like inner wall, and both depend on water leaving during frying and nothing putting it back. Cool the shells uncovered on a wire rack, never on paper, which traps steam underneath. Never refrigerate them: humid cold makes the crust leathery in a couple of hours.
This is why assembly is a la minute. Fried choux is porous by design, it draws moisture from any cream it touches, and a sfincia filled in the morning will have collapsed by lunch.
Professional Mise en Place
Four components, and only one belongs to the last minute. Split the work across the day before, the morning and the final fifteen minutes, and the dessert becomes calm rather than frantic.
Day before: drain the ricotta 24 hours in the refrigerator and toast the pistachio crumble, keeping it airtight at room temperature
Morning: sieve the ricotta twice with the sugar, fold in chocolate and candied orange, refrigerate in a piping bag with a large plain tip
Morning: cook the orange sauce, cool it and hold it covered at room temperature
Up to 4 hours ahead: cook the panata, rest it 45 minutes and fry the shells, cooling them uncovered on a rack
At service: chill the plates, set out crumble, cherries, orange strips, chocolate and zest, then split, fill, garnish and send within five minutes
Chef Tips
Judge the panata by the white film on the bottom of the pan, not by the clock. A light coloured saucepan makes that veil visible; a dark nonstick pan hides it and leaves you guessing.
Test the oil with a teaspoon of paste before the first batch. If it sinks, waits three or four seconds, then rises and starts to swell, the temperature is right. If it colours at once, the oil is too hot.
Sieve the ricotta, never blend it. A processor shears the curd, warms it and releases whey, and the cream goes liquid within an hour.
If you are frying more than three batches, keep a second shallow pan at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius) for the colouring stage, so you never wait for one pan to recover.
Common Mistakes
Adding the eggs to a hot paste: the most common failure, and invisible until frying. Above 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) the first egg cooks on contact, the protein sets in specks instead of an elastic network, and the shells refuse to inflate. Spread the paste out and check it with a thermometer.
Frying too hot from the start: oil at 350 or 360 degrees Fahrenheit browns the surface within a minute and seals it before the steam has stretched the pastry. The sfincia looks convincing and is raw inside. Start low, raise the heat only to finish.
Turning the sfince by hand: impatient turning tears the inflating shell and the pastry deflates into a flat disc. Leave them alone, and let them roll over when the base has set.
Filling the shells in advance: a sfincia filled more than a few minutes early pulls moisture from the cream, the crust softens and the pastry sags. Fry ahead if you must, but fill at the table.
Wine Pairing
The pairing answers three things at once: the fat of the fried shell, the lactic richness of sheep milk ricotta, and the candied citrus and toasted pistachio on top. A sweet wine is necessary, since a dry one tastes hollow against the sugar, but it needs acidity underneath or the plate turns cloying.
Greco di Bianco DOC: a passito from the Calabrian coast that looks across the strait at Sicily, dried on the vine and the closest wine on this list to the flavours in the pastry. Candied orange peel, bergamot and acacia honey run straight alongside the candied fruit in the ricotta, while a resinous, slightly bitter edge on the finish keeps the sweetness from piling up.
Malvasia di Bosa DOC: a Sardinian wine aged under a veil of yeast, giving toasted almond, dried apricot and a dry, nutty close. That oxidative, nut driven profile is a direct echo of the pistachio crumble, and the firm, savoury finish cuts the frying fat in a way a purely sweet wine cannot.
Moscato d'Asti DOCG: low in alcohol at around 5 percent, gently sparkling and intensely grapey, with sage and orange blossom aromatics. The soft bubble scrubs the palate clean of fried fat between bites and the fresh acidity lifts the ricotta, making it the easiest choice at the end of a long feast day table.
Storage and Reheating
Unfilled shells keep uncovered on a rack at room temperature for up to 1 day. Do not refrigerate them, since humid cold turns the crust leathery. To bring back the crispness, warm them at 320 degrees Fahrenheit (160 degrees Celsius) for 4 to 5 minutes and cool fully before filling. The ricotta cream keeps 2 days in an airtight container in the refrigerator and should be sieved again if it has released liquid. The orange sauce keeps 3 days refrigerated. Filled sfince do not keep and are eaten within minutes. Neither shells nor cream freeze successfully.
Nutrition Information
Per serving, one filled sfincia with crumble and sauce:
Calories: 690 kcal
Total Fat: 44 g
Saturated Fat: 17 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 25 g
Cholesterol: 265 mg
Sodium: 260 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 56 g
Fiber: 3 g
Total Sugars: 36 g
Added Sugars: 28 g
Protein: 21 g
Lactose: about 7 g
Calcium: 420 mg, Vitamin C: 45 mg, Vitamin A: 390 mcg, Phosphorus: 330 mg
Allergens: contains milk, eggs, wheat and tree nuts (pistachio and almond).
These values are estimates based on the quantities above and will vary with the fat content of the ricotta, the oil absorbed during frying and the size of the pastries.
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