One of my favourite things about Italy is the cuisine. So many delectable delights to savour! When I visited Venice, I liked nothing better than to settle in one of the thriving pavement cafes and sample the sweet treats alongside some of the rich, aromatic coffee on offer. That is how I came to try fritelli veneziane.

These little doughnuts are bite-sized pieces of heaven – utterly decadent, but delicious and morish. They’re famous in Venice, and date back hundreds of years; indeed, in the eighth century they were the national cake of the Venetian state. They’re very popular at Carnival time.

I loved them so much when I tried them that subsequently I wrote them into my novel The Echoes of Love, creating the coffee shop Fritelli where my heroine Venetia goes often with her friend Francesca to talk and watch the world go by and have a little treat.

Today I’m sharing with you a simple recipe you can use to make these little naughty-but-nice morsels at home. It may not be the original eighth-century recipe, but it’s pretty delicious all the same!

Ingredients

100g caster sugar

2 tablespoons brandy or rum

250ml milk

25g yeast

3 eggs

300g all-purpose flour

30g pine nuts

50g butter

70g raisins

icing sugar, to dust

oil for frying (peanut or pine nut)

Pinch of salt

Zest of 1 lemon

1. Wash and dry the raisins. Soak overnight in the rum or brandy.
2. Warm the milk a little and stir in the yeast until dissolved.
3. Melt the butter.
4. Place half the sugar in a bowl and mix in the eggs, then add the butter, milk-and-yeast, raisins, pine nuts and lemon zest and bring together into a smooth dough.
5. Add the flour and salt, bit by bit, and knead thoroughly.
6. Leave the dough to rise for an hour (should be double in size).
7. Heat the oil to a high temperature, and drop balls of dough in. Fry until golden.
8. Dry on paper towels and sprinkle with sugar. Serve warm or cold.

If you’re feeling especially decadent, you can pipe cream or chocolate sauce into the centre of each.