Faschingskrapfen: A recipe

Hello lovely peeps!

Again more than a week has passed since my last blog post. And again - things are a little crazy and hectic around here, so I never get around to write up a post during the week. To make up for this I decided to share a recipe with you.

In Austria, right now the carneval is going on. On Sunday, there was a big parade in my hometown, people got dressed up and finally had a good excuse to get really drunk at ten a.m. on a Sunday morning. Not really my cup of tea, but my man and I watched the parade and then went for a loooong walk with the dog, far away from all the noise and the party and the drinking.
 
The good thing about the carneval though is one thing: Faschingskrapfen! Austrian culture is deeply linked with cooking and baking. Especially sweets and baked goods are essential to every kind of holiday or celebration!
The Krapfen are made of a yeast dough and taste a little similar to donuts. As they are not the quickest of recipes, people tend to buy them, rather than making them themselves. But I never really like the bought ones and so I decided to try them out myself after a recipe from my mother which she got from her mother which she got from my great-grand-aunt. So it's kind of a family heirloom and I am happy to keep up with the tradition!

Usually, they are filled with apricot jam, as I didn't have the tools to fill them, I left them unfilled. If you want to make them, be sure that you have a free morning or afternoon at your disposal. They're not very difficult to make, but the dough needs to rest 3 times altogether and that what makes it a little time consuming. But believe me - they're all worth it! (The time it takes is probably the reason why people only make it once a year. Which makes them all the more special, in my opinion!)

But now enough with the talking, here we go with the ingredients. For about 20 of these delicious "Krapfen" you'll need:

650 g of plain flour
1 package of yeast (around 50 gram)
6 egg yolks
100 g butter
50 g icing sugar (powdered sugar)
two tablespoons Rum
250 ml and 125 ml of milk
a dash of salt

First, put the flour in a large bowl. Make a little crate. Then crumble the yeast into that crate. Warm the 250 ml of milk and dissolve the sugar in it. Be careful, that the milk is not too hot! Pour the milk over the yeast and make sure that the yeast is dissolving. Put a clean cotton dish towel over the bowl and let it rest for about 20 minutes on a warm place, for example next to a heater.

While the yeast is rising, warm the 125 ml of milk. Dissolve the butter in the milk, add the rum to the liquid and at last, gently stir the egg yolks in your milk-mixture. Again, be careful that the milk is not too hot. I'm always testing it with my finger, it should just feel a little warm. 

After 20 minutes rest, the least/milk mixture should look something like this:

the yeast has risen

Mix all the ingredients together now and knead them into a soft and smooth dough. If you find the dough rather sticky, add some more flour to it. When the dough doesn't stick to your fingers anymore, it's perfect.

Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes. It should rise in this time and look like this:

and so has the dough

Roll the dough out with a rolling pin. It should be about 3 cm thick. Then use a large cookie cutter to cut out little circles of the dough. Put the "Krapfen" on a clean cotton dish towel and cover them with another towel. Let them rest again for about 30 minutes.

cutting out the Krapfen. If you don't have a cookie cutter in this shape, use an upside down water glass

They should rise again and should look like this:

Heat some vegetable fat in a large pot. The dougnuts should be able to swim in the fat! Make sure that the fat isn't too hot, or the Krapfen will be raw inside. Let them bake at one side and then turn them around. If they've risen as they should have, they will have a small bright line in the middle.

If you want, you can fill them with jam or nutella or whatever you fancy. My man and me prefer to sprinkle them with powdered sugar, others love to dab a large splat of apricot jam onto them. Whatever you like.

Just be sure to eat them when they are still warm! Enjoy and let me know if you've tried the recipe and how you liked them! :)