Mom Photographer and The Gang

… at least in my home.

Fat Thursday –  is traditional Polish and German feast marking the last Thursday before Lent and is associated with the celebration of Carnival. Because Lent is a time of fasting, the next opportunity to feast would not be until Easter. (Wikipedia).

All Catholics know that – not that I am one, but I grew up in a very religious Catholic family with plenty of doughnuts and faworki every single year on Fat Thursday. More often we had homemade faworki than pączki (doughnuts). It was much easier to make for the family of 5 plus grandparents and, I think, we all liked them better than pączki.

These days, for me Fat Thursday is more like a cultural tradition not very much connected to religion. Being far away from my home country I take a thing or two from the religion I grew up with and make it a cultural thing. It kind of make sense even for Polish people living in Poland because Catholicism is connected very closely to the culture of our country, so even people that are not very religious still celebrate Fat Thursday by indulging themselves eating unlimited amount of doughnuts on that day.

I should’ve done this post yesterday but to the last minute I was convinced that I am not going to make anything for Fat Thursday this year. I went to bed last night thinking: I’m too tired to make something that it’s actually going to be just for me. My husband is not a big fan of deep fried foods. Of course he’ll eat french fries, fried onion rings, fried chicken and many different deep fried foods (all in the restaurant) but if I make something at home that is deep fried he does not want to eat it. Oh, and he has nothing against store-bought doughnuts – SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL HIM THEY ARE ALL DEEP FRIED!!!

Anyway, I got up this morning and couldn’t stop thinking about making faworki (chrusty, angel wings).

After making breakfast for everybody I put myself to work (I mean, my stand mixer). 

Those delicious little things are very easy to make and with all the ingredients that most of us have already in the kitchen.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp white sugar

4 egg yolks

5 tsp plain yoghurt (original recipe calls for sour cream) plus more if necessary

1 tsp vinegar

2 Tbsp. butter, softened

pinch of salt

orange zest (optional) – this is my twist to this recipe so actually it’s not necessary 

oil for frying

Put all the ingredients together in a big bowl and mix it in your Kitchen Aid or knead by hand until the dough is smooth and looks like that:

If the dough is too dry and doesn’t want to hold together just add a teaspoon of plain yoghurt. If it’s still too dry add one more until the dough holds together, is nice and smooth and easy to shape into a ball.

Wrap the dough in a plastic wrap, aluminum foil or parchment paper and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. After that time take it out cut into four pieces, leave one piece out and put the 3 left back to the fridge. When you’re done with cutting, folding and frying that first part, repeat everything with the remaining 3.

On lightly floured surface roll the dough very thinly. The more thin the dough the more crispy the pastry will get after frying.

When done rolling with a sharp knife cut the dough into 1 1/2 inch wide and 4 inches long stripes. Make 1 inch or 1 1/2 inch long slit in the middle of each strip.

Working with your both hands open the slit in the middle. Take the top and fold it towards the slit. Pull the end through the slit.

Gently pull both ends and you made yourself a perfect angel wing 🙂

Repeat with the remaining strips.

Fry in hot oil. You can check the oil if it’s ready by putting one corner of the raw angel wing in the oil. If it starts to sizzle and bubbles appear it means that the oil is ready.

Fry on both sides until golden brown. The heat should be on medium high for the best results. Keep an eye on them as they tend to burn really fast.

You might want to put them on paper towel to soak the extra oil out. While still warm heavily sprinkle with powdered sugar. I mean, REALLY heavily 🙂

Keep it high enough so your Little Ones can’t get into it while you’re not watching.