Happy Paczki Day

Yesterday was Fat Tuesday; or in any place where wonderful Polish bakeries exist, it's Paczki Day.  These traditionally Polish raised donuts are filled with a super-sized amount of jelly and are usually sold only one day a year - the day of feasting before a traditional fast on Ash Wednesday. 

It makes me smile to ponder that no one seems to know that the singular form of paczki is paczek (according to the Detroit Free Press tweet yesterday.) Obviously, no one else can eat just one either.

We certainly didn't. My dear husband was at Kirschbaum's (a local German bakery which has embraced the Polish tradition) by 7:30AM for a box of these fried yeasty yummies.  They were fresh, thickly sprinkled with powdered sugar and filled with poppyseed, strawberry, blueberry, cheese (a cream cheese custard) and Strawberries & Cream fillings. The blueberry was terrible - the filling was fake food chemicals. (My kids still ate the sticky sweetness.)  But the poppyseed was amazing.