Traditional Carnival Doughnuts

Just a tiny bit belated, let me show you two of our traditional doughnut recipes, typically made in Hungary in the "carnival" season.

The first is called Csöröge and is a very simple but delicious, crunchy type of thing. In fact, you wouldn't call it a doughnut as it's basically plain fried egg pasta.

To make the dough, simply knead a pound of flour with a cup of sour cream, a pinch of salt, a tablespoon of sugar, half a cup of melted butter/margarine and five egg yolks. Let the dough rest a little before rolling it out on a floured surface. Cut the dough into palm-sized diamond shaped pieces. Make a cut in the middle of each and pull one corner through the cut. You'll get a funny bow-like shape.

Heat oil in a big pan and fry the doughnuts on both sides. Drain the oil and sift castor sugar on the doughnuts while still warm. Serve with jam.

From Kaják

From Kaják

To restore world order, the second doughnut I'll present you does look like an actual doughnut :)

It was named after the ribbon-like white stripe that goes around the middle.

From Kaják

Ingredients include a pound of flour, 2-3 tablespoons of melted butter/margarine, a pinch of salt, 2-3 tablespoons of sugar, a cup of warm milk, 50grams yeast, one egg.

Make a well in the flour, add yeast, sugar and milk, combine with a little flour and let the yeast rise a bit. Then add the rest of the ingredients and knead well, until the dough comes off the sides of the bowl and your hand. Let it rise at a warm place for about 30minutes or until about doubles in size. Roll it out a bit and fold into half. Roll out to about 3-5millimeter thickness (quite flat) and using a cookie-cutter or simply a glass, cut small circles of the dough. Let them rise again and fry them in hot oil on both sides until golden.

From Kaják

Sweet bread with walnut filling - originally Finnish holiday wreath

I read this recipe somewhere months ago and forgot to save it, so I came up with my own version.

It looked like this

I used about 1lb flour, 30g(1ounce) yeast, 1 cup warm milk, half a cup sugar, pinch of salt, 2 egg yolks, half a cup butter/margarine, a teaspoon of ground cardamom seeds and made a light and fluffy leavened dough. I let it rise for about half an hour then rolled it out a little. The filling consisted of coarsely ground walnut, melted butter and sugar. You can mix these and spread on the dough or sprinkle the butter first and then the walnut and sugar (saves you one bowl :)

Then I rolled it up and placed in a cake tin(the one that has a whole in the middle), let it rise again, then baked at 200C (400F) for about 30minutes. Sprinkling some milk on it in the last couple of minutes makes the bread softer!

Later, I found the original recipe online.

The ingredients are basically the same(more butter and a tablespoon of flour in the filling, and almond flakes on the top), but the shape is a bit different. They fold the roll into a circle, cut it into slices, but not cutting through to the bottom, and move the slices apart a bit, in and out. It looks like this: