My childhood memories are steeped in food traditions, maybe that is why food is an integral part of my life and why I am constantly striving to give that to my girls. Today is Shrove Tuesday- I never knew many people who celebrated this as a kid but in our house my mother always made Fasnacht. Again, for years I asked people if they did this and not one person knew what the hell I was talking about. In fact, I never knew until we moved to Austria that Fasnacht is actually Shrove Tuesday in German- it also refers to the the donuts we ate, however, in Austria the donuts are called Krapfen and they are filled with Apricot Jam and dusted with sugar. They arent very sweet as well- actually all sweets in Vienna are not very sweet even though they look it, I think that is actually why you can have a slice of cake in the afternoon and it doesn't send you into a sugar coma.
Anyway, I chose to make a yeast raised donut this year. My mother makes the dough with potato but I left it out and went the purist route. I had high hopes of sending the girls to school this morning with sugared chins and I even made the dough last night. But as with all great intentions something went wrong.... as in I overslept! So I had to tell them they could have them after school instead. I cut them in the diamond shape my Mother always made and let them rise again for about 30 minutes and fried them up in some Crisco until puffed on brown on one side then flipped them to finish off. Once I took them out to drain on paper bags I dusted them heavily with powdered sugar and called the neighbor kids to come and get them. They were pretty good and all were happy!
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