Paczki

Lately I've been seeing a lot of promotions around local grocery stores for paczki, and example of which you can see here:

They say the paczki will only be around until Fat Tuesday, so we decided to snap up a box.

So what is a paczki? According to Wikipedia, they are: Pączki (Polish: pączki) are traditional Polish doughnuts. Pączki is the plural form of the word pączek (pronounced: [ˈpɔ̃t͡ʂɛk]) in Polish, though many English speakers use paczki as singular and paczkis as plural.

A pączek is a deep-fried piece of dough shaped into a flattened sphere and filled with confiture or other sweet filling. Pączki are usually covered with powdered sugar, icing or bits of dried orange zest.

In Poland, they are eaten especially on Fat Tuesday, the last Tuesday before Lent which is Wednesday (Ash Wednesday (Polish: Tłusty czwartek. Traditionally, the reason for making pączki was to use up all the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit in the house, which are forbidden during Lent.

Due to New Orleans' influence, in America, pączki are eaten on Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) rather than on Fat Thursday. In the large Polish community of Chicago, and other large cities across the Midwest, Paczki Day is also celebrated annually by immigrants and locals alike.

Erin and I like the Paczki pretty pretty well. It's about like eating a donut. Ours are filled with white cream fluff, but there were many filling choices available.