Mima's recipe took years to develop. After painstaking research, Mima found that all Zeppoli recipes start with flour, Hot oil, and powdered sugar, which is where similarities end. Some require butter and eggs, for example. Others do not. At the Feast of San Giuseppe in Naples Italy, flour is dissolved into melted butter over medium heat, then allowed to cool, at which time eggs are added as the mixture cools.
Time passes, then the mix is fried again on high.
The whole process takes 30 minutes to an hour. In other places, yeast is used to prepare the mix for frying. This requires a waiting period of up to an hour and one half, and the kind of sustained effort that is necessary for say, building a ship in a bottle. And that is what caused a dilemma for Mima who liked offering them to family and friends each Christmas and Easter, but who did not like the extended time it takes to make them that way, nor the several steps necessary for getting a batch of fresh zeppoli ready for Christmas and Easter dessert. 25 years ago, she found it.