Choice Morsel: International Doughnut Culture, Part 6

Italian doughnuts (top): Cantinetta’s bombolini with citrus confit; Tavolata’s zeppole with chocolate sauce,;
(bottom) bomboloni from La Spiga; and Cicchetti’s ricotta zeppole filled with huckleberry sauce.

Move over gelato, zeppole and bomboloni are crashing your party!

written by Tracy Schneider

When I was a student in Bologna, I’d walk to the post office almost every Saturday afternoon and use the international phones there to call my family in the U.S. On the way home, I’d go right past the gelato shop and make a beeline for BomboCrep, a local hangout that specialized in crepes and bomboloni. The Italian version of a filled doughnut, bomboloni are made from rolled yeast dough, deep-fried and then filled with delectable chocolate or vanilla cream.

There’s no BomboCrep in Seattle, but you can still enjoy bomboloni, now that Cantinetta has added them to their dessert menu for the month of March. Cantinetta serves miniature bomboloni, called bombolini, made to order and stuffed with a mascarpone pastry cream. Warm and oozing on the inside with that decadent rich cream, these bombolini are also perfectly crisped on the outside and make a satisfying crunch when you take that first bite.

If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of reading this in April, and Cantinetta has changed its menu, you’re not quite out of luck. Over the summer, La Spiga celebrates Ferragosto, an Italian holiday that takes place on August 15 with trays of bomboloni (above). And if you can’t wait until August, you can call the restaurant forty-eight hours in advance, whatever the month, and pastry chef Betsy Balog will make them just for you.

While bomboloni are typical in northern Italy, zeppole are the doughnuts of choice in the South. Typically considered street food and traditionally eaten on March 19 for La Festa di San Giuseppe (Saint Joseph's Day), in Seattle you can eat zeppole — a ricotta version stuffed with huckleberry sauce at Cicchetti and an unfilled version served with chocolate sauce at Tavolata — everyday, but why not make reservations for March 19 anyway and celebrate like an Italian?   

Our doughnuts of the world series continues next week, as we scour Seattle for Spanish churros.

For more doughnuts from around the globe, try French beignets, Polish paczki, Portuguese malasadas, Chinese saa jung and Greek loukoumades.

Photography by Tracy Schneider and Van Schilperoort