Polish cenci - Faworki

Hello everyone! No, I didn't go out of the kitchen! In fact I couldn't do it for a long time so I decide to move my laptop to the kitchen. Now me, my kompot, bottom mushoom, coconut oil, pineapple, tomatoes, black turnips and other treasures that fill me with warmth are with me and we can follow. 

Today is Jeudi Gras or Fat Thursday (Tłusty Czwartek) so in Poland we consume huge amounts of Polish best-in-the-world doughnuts. The average amount for a person is about six. Six yummy, fluffy, sweet, deep-fried pieces of dough filled with roship jam or cream in the recent years. Coated with icing, icing sugar, coconut or chocolate. Mmm. There are huge queues at the cake shops for the whole day, but especially in the morning when everyone is buing them for work. I can't stop my self while gazing at my last year's divine doughnuts. Hopefully my husband will hunt some. I used Gosia's great doughnut recipe. Last year I have fried them traditionally, in pork's lard. The taste is gorgeous and the pastry is not so heavy as you may think.

This year I made Polish cenci called here faworki [favo:rki] or chrust [hru:st]. Originally they came from Lithuania. Probably a confectioner dropped by accident a piece of doughnut dough to the hot oil and a nice ribbon came out. That is why the pastry was named after the French word for ribbon - 'faveur'. But I like to think that the name implied that the pastry is simply a favourite.... Another Polish name means brushwood because of the crispness of cenci. With centuries faworki has developed its own dough recipe different from that one for doughnuts as the last one absorbs much frying fat. So the ideal faworek is crisp, thin,  with little blisters on the surface,  and sweet because heavily dusted with icing sugar.

Traditional recipe for Polish faworki

 

250 g flour

2 Tbsp natural yogurt /sour cream

2 egg yolks

1 whole egg

1 tsp butter/ pork's lard

1 tsp spirit to prevent absorbing of frying fat

(white wine vinegar is also good)

fat for frying - vegetable oil is fine

icing sugar for dusting

1.  Sieve the flour and icing sugar into a bowl.
2. Add eggs, yogurt and butter, mix with a fork. Transfer onto the kneading surface and knead until smooth.Than bash the dough with the rolling pin until shiny (from my practise - not necessary action). The dough is ready when you cut it with a knife and can see small wholes.
3. Cover the dough with a bowl and roll in two parts. Roll out very thinly, then cut into strips of 3x10 cm. Cut along the center of the each stripe (see the photo). Put one end of the stripe into the whole and pull through. Make the same with the other ones before they get dry.Follow the same with the rest of the dough.
4. Heat the oil in a heavy pan. Drop a piece of dough to check if the temperature is fine. The pastry shall fry for about several dozen seconds until golden, then you turn it and fry the other side. Drain on the paper towel.
5. Cool down and dust heavily with the icing sugar. The more sugar the better!!! Now faworki look like tree branches bending under the load of snow!

 

My way to go through it is to try one faworek of every fried batch.... You can also try my another cenci recipe. Have a happy carnival season!