Polish Doughnuts (Paczki)
Category: Pastries
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 2 tbsp softened unsalted butter
- ½ cup warm whole milk
- ¼ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 pinch of salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp dry yeast
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- Enough oil for deep frying (see notes)
- Roughly 2½ cups jelly, jam, or custard, for filling (optional)
- Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)
Instructions
- Whisk together the sugar, butter, milk, vanilla, salt, and eggs. Then, whisk in the yeast.
- While continuously stirring, add the flour ½ cup at a time until the mixture is a firm dough.
- Knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Put it back in the bowl, cover, and let it rise somewhere warm until it's twice its original size—this should take about 1½ hours.
- Pat the dough on a lightly floured surface, and roll the dough until it's about ½ inch thick. Cut out circles of dough and set aside. The exact size the circles should be is entirely up to your preference; the final product will have only a slightly larger diameter. You can roll out the excess dough again to cut more pączki.
- Let the dough rounds rise for about 30 minutes or until they've doubled in size.
- Heat oil to about 350°F in a deep pot or pan. Carefully spoon or slide a few pączki into the oil at a time to deep fry them until golden-brown. They will only be half submerged, so you will have to flip them to fry both sides; in a pinch, disposable chopsticks work well for this.
- While the pączki cool, spoon some fruit jelly, jam, or custard in a pastry bag with a long, narrow point. Fill the pączki by pushing the point into their sides.
- Sprinkle some powdered sugar on top, to taste. If the pączki are still warm, the powdered sugar may melt a bit.
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