BOYERTOWN – Shrove Tuesday celebrations are different all over the world, and the United States has some interesting pre-Lent traditions.
New Orleans does King Cake better than any other city. The twisted, apple or cream cheese filled cake is covered in a tricolor frosting of green, purple and gold to represent justice, faith and power. A small toy is baked into the cake. It is usually a small toy baby to represent the baby Jesus, and it is meant to bring good luck to whoever gets it.
The large Polish communities around Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo make large batches of Paczkis. These sugary, fried rounds are similar to doughnuts. They are served powered, with granulated sugar or plain and filled with fruit, creams or jams.
Growing up in the middle of the country, I celebrated the upcoming Lenten season with pancakes.
Lots of pancakes. In elementary school, the entirety of Pancake Day was spent in our gym having pancake races. A relay race where the participants would hold a light-weight skillet, flip a pancake shaped bean-bag once, and then run to the other end of the gym. We would flip the ‘pancake’ one more time when we got to there and hustle back. There was no prize for the fastest team except the knowledge that your pancake flipping skills had improved.
Needless to say, I was very excited to try my first fasnacht, a popular treat in eastern Pennsylvania. And it did not disappoint.
Every inch of counter space the back room of Dice’s Bakery was covered in fasnacht dough in one stage or another. Two fryers were full of a steady stream of hand-cut dough pieces that filled the entire store with a sweet aroma. Industrial baking racks lined the perimeter of the room that held rows and rows of cloth covered fasnachts cooling down before packaging.
Mary Dice, owner of the bakery at 30 N. Reading Ave. in Boyertown says her family recipe has been passed down for three to four generations on her father’s side.
Her mother learned how to make them from her sister-in-law and Dice said her mother would make 40 dozen every year to freeze or give away.
Dice said the only difference in the recipe is she fries the fasnachts in soybean oil instead of lard.
‘Traditionally they have always used lard, but when I was little my mom started frying them in vegetable oil. She wanted to turn them into a little healthier thing,’ Dice said. ‘People think that they need to have lard because of that lard taste when they are fried, but most of the flavor comes from the potatoes and flour that seep into the oil.’
Dice believes that having a traditional family recipe is the only way to make fasnachts properly.
‘You really have to have it in your family tradition to know how to do it properly. People will make them commercially and they will use a doughnut dough base, and put potato flakes in for the flavor but that’s not the same,’ she said.
She cooked and mashed over 80 pounds of potatoes that will go into more than 600 dozen fasnachts. That is 7,800 fasnachts. The sheer volume is astounding.
She also thinks that is why so few bakeries in the immediate area make fasnachts. Dice said that even if someone were to have her family recipe, which she assured me no one else does, the real art of making a good fasnacht is a learned understanding of how to handle the ingredients.
‘Even if they saw me making the fasnachts, they couldn’t be taught the feel it takes when making them,’ she said.
But one tradition that isn’t kept a secret is how a fasnacht is eaten.
I took the simple route and tried a warm, powdered sugar covered fasnacht for my first one, but serious fasnacht coinsurers will toast the pastry then add butter and molasses.
‘People who know the tradition of actually doing the fasnachts will order them plain and do the molasses,’ she said. ‘And people who like them for the sake of the doughnuts will actually do the powdered and the granulated.’
And, she reminded me, that a traditional fasnacht does not have a hole in the middle.
Even though the pastries are no larger than the palm of your hand, it takes two days from start to finish for one batch. Dice made 75 dozen fasnachts from Sunday into Monday.
She estimates that she will have 300 dozen packaged pastries for orders and 350 dozen ready for walk-ins. Last year, Dice said the bakery sold 650 dozen fasnachts. In 1990, when she started selling the fasnachts commercially, she sold 170 dozen.
For the 25 minutes I was in the bakery, she received three calls for orders. Dice said that most of the orders are for 1-6 dozen but she has gotten orders as big as 80 dozen.
I now understand why people come to the bakery every year for this pre-fasting treat.
There are two dozen warm, sugar coated fasnachts sitting at arms-length of my desk. It is taking everything I have not to reach for another and eat while I type.
