Other than a lack of Slavic blood and not growing up in the Midwest, I’m not sure how I spent the better part of my life not knowing about pączki. It was pretty much blissful ignorance, until I came across them my first winter in Michigan during graduate school. Of course, there’s definitely such a thing as too much of a good pączek as I found out when I ate half of a box of them and felt the evil effects soon after on the way to class. The next year I made the trek to Hamtramck on Pączki Day to partake in them when they were as fresh as could be. Given my highly intimate connection to this fried, gooey goodness in the heart of pączki country, you could imagine my surprise when I came across them in the grocery store just two blocks from apartment.
For the uninitiated, pączki are a form of doughnut usually filled with jelly that Poles made to use up lard, flour and fruit before Lent. The real deal are filled with prunes, but lemon, strawberry, and custard are pretty common and have been sampled by this humble gourmand. They’re a whole heck of a lot like sufganiyot, too, which makes sense. (Talk about a treat I haven’t had in ages!) Traditionally, they were made on the Thursday before Lent rather than the ever-so-familiar Fat Tuesday, but Tuesday seems to be more convenient for some bakeries, especially if they’re making other Mardi Gras treats like king cake. While I’ll be abstaining this time around, I suggest you take any and possibly all advantages to sample a pączek. Smacnego!
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