Chrusty (Faworki)

I have a Polish background. My mother hailed from Poland and my father's family hailed from Poland, though his family migrated to another European country before his birth. I was born in Australia and I always remember my mother making a Polish sweet. We made it for family gatherings, made it for multicultural day at school. Then I made it for my children's multicultural day at school and I made it for this year's harmony day at work. This sweet is called Chrusty or Faworki.

I got a recipe for it from my mother's Polish cook book but I somehow misplaced it, which is not unusual for me. I even at times have misplaced my car keys to find I was holding them in my hand. I got all flustered for absolutely no reason. So I looked for another recipe on English and Polish websites and settled on the following recipe. My ability to read Polish is somewhat limited and wondering how much is a glass of flour in a Polish recipe, left me taking hold of a English recipe. They do their measurements a in glasses so it left me wondering how big is a glass of flour? Does it mean a cup?

The ingredients

250 grams of flour

5 egg yokes

2 tablespoons of sour cream

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon on vinegar

Icing sugar for dusting

The method

Mix the flour, egg yokes, sour cream, sugar and vinegar in a bowl. Knead it into a dough and then, with a rolling pin, roll it out flat, a few millimeters thin.

 Using a knife make lines in the dough, as shown in the below photo.

In each cut out strip, cut it into roughly 10 centimeter length and cut a three centimeter slit in each piece that will become the Chrusty. See the photo below for guidance.

Take one end of the chrust and pull it through the slit in the middle until you get it looking as follows.

Heat up some oil for a shallow frying. Add spoon of vodka in the oil to prevent it from foaming. Yes the Polish solve everything with a vodka or two. When the oil is hot enough fry the chrusty until golden and then remove from the heat and when all completed, dust them over with some icing sugar on both sides. There has been hardly a person who could resist Chrusty. Faworki is another term they are known by but I have always known them as Chrusty. Pronounced with a H sound and not a CH.