PUSTNI KROFI - SLOVENIAN CARNIVAL DOUGHNUTS

In Slovenia, like in many other countries around the world, we celebratE the Carnival Season. For us, the carnival is called Pust. Pust scares the Winter away and welcomes the Spring to begin. Many towns in Slovenia, for example Ptuj or Cerknica, are famous for their Carnival. Like other festivities, Pust has some traditional dishes to celebrate with. This is also time before the beginning of fasting in Christianity, so the last chance to eat very rich food before Easter. The old saying tells us that Pust has to be fat, greasy around the mouth in order to have good harvest later in the year. 
Among famous traditional dishes are Pustni krofi - Carnival Doughnuts and Krhki flancati - Brittle Flancati. 

Pustni krofi - Carnival Doughnuts

Doughnuts  are well known all over the world.  They are many explanations regarding their origin. One explanation says they were already part of Ancient  Roman Cuisine, others  connect them with German and Austrian cuisines, which had a big influence on Slovenian Cuisine. 

In the past Krofi were made only for this Carnival season. Today we can buy them freshly made all year round. Like many traditional dishes, krofi are made with different recipes. 

Pustni krofi - the recipe: 

The main thing is to make very good, soft dough with wheat flour and yeast. To do that,  more than flour and yeast are needed.

Ingredients for dough:

1 kg of wheat flour - 1/2 soft and 1/2 hard is better
40 g of fresh yeast or 20 g of dry instant yeast
1 tsp of salt

Wheat flour with dry instant  yeast.

4 eggs

60 g of sugar

60 g of butter - melted
100 g of sour cream
300 ml of milk
lemon zest
4 tbsp of good rum

oil for deep frying

It is necessary that all the ingredients are warm, as well as the place where you are going to do the dough. 

Sift the flour into a big bowl. Add the yeast in the middle with a bit of sugar. On the other side of the bowl add salt which must not be mixed directly into the yeast. 
Separately you blend the egg whites well. Then add eggs yolks, sugar, melted butter, sour cream, lemon zest, rum and very warm milk - 50 degrees C.

Mixture of all wet ingredients.

Now start to knead the dough with adding milk mixture to the flour. You can knead the dough by hands or with food processor. The dough is ready when it does not stick to the bowl or hands anymore and it is as soft as possible. Cover it with cotton and put to rise, approximately 1 hour. 

Knead the dough.

The dough must be very soft. 

Sprinkle the dough with flour 
and cover with table clothes.

After 1 hour the dough will rise
and is ready to work with.

After that we put the dough on a table clothes covered with flour and role it out very gently. Do not stretch! Cover rolled dough to rise for at least 10 minutes then cut out krofi with a round shaped model.  Covere them to rise on one side, then turn them around to rise on the other side - 10 to 20 minutes on each side. 

Cut out round shapes and cover to rise on both sides.

Put the oil in a pan for deep frying and make it warm a bit less than for frying meat. Put krofi into oil with upper side down. Cover for 2 to 3 minutes and then turn them around and fry without covering them again. When fried put them on paper to absorb the excess oil.

When still warm, inject the apricot jam into each krof and sprinkle it with sugar powder. 

Inject the jam when still warm.

Serve them as a desert with tea or coffee.

On Carnival day you can eat as much as you want. 

More  photos on this LINK!