The Carnival of Venice is an annual festival held in Venice, Italy, famous throughout the world for its elaborate costumes and masks. The Carnival ends on Shrove Tuesday, which is the day before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday.

While the Carnivale in Venice is the most famous celebration, the rest of the Catholic world celebrates as well. And, one aspect of any celebration is food! glorious food!

There are a bunch of foods specific just for this festa. And, since we’re happily in Italy, the treats and their names are specific to the regions from which they come!

I was walking through a local grocery store and was greeted/confronted with a huge display of seasonal treats here in Florence! You could not escape it!

These fried dough treats are called different names in different regions of Italy: Some of the fried sweets most popular across Italy during Carnivale are frittelle, cenci (which means rags), chiacchiere (meaning chat or gossip) and little fried balls of dough called castagnole. They might also be called “lies” or bugie and some of the lies for sale here are “chocolate lies”, “apricot lies”, and “hazelnut lies.”

Castagnole means ‘little chestnuts’ in Italian, but there’s nothing nutty about this popular carnival treat. The name derives instead from the resemblance of these little golden-brown fried doughnuts to chestnuts. A recipe for castagnole is recorded in a manuscript from the 1700s, and they are often made at home during the period of carnival.

The dough used for castagnole is typically flavoured with lemon zest and aniseed liquor, and the finished article is often filled with chocolate or pastry cream before being rolled in sugar. Best enjoyed piping hot! In Venice you’ll often find castagnole under the name favette.

For more on food see: https://youtu.be/R2UuJVrMeWQ