Chruścik – Polish Pastry Twists – copyright R.Weal 2010

Chruścik are the subject of today’s blog post.  ”What are they?” I hear you ask, well quite simply they are a Polish pudding dish, a basic sour dough pastry twist that has been deep fried and dredged with icing sugar.  They’re sometimes known as Chrust and Faworki in Poland and in the USA some people call them Angel Wings.

They are exceptionally delicious and as a young girl I always looked forward with extra relish to seeing Babcia (my polish grandmother) when I knew she was going to be cooking up a batch. Having just recently lost Babcia it felt really nice to bake up a batch in her honour.  I felt really close to her in a very down to earth way, which is not surprising really as Babcia was always cooking up a feast in the kitchen and my most treasured memories of her are sitting and eating in the kitchen or more often than not getting in her way as she cooked!

The batch in the picture are to take to my Auntie Chris’ tomorrow who is cooking Sunday lunch and as a good Polish niece I’m bringing a long something to ensure that we have enough food for 5,000 rather than the 7 or so who will be at the table!  This will be the first time the family has gotten together since Babcia’s wake and it felt important to bring along something that reminded me of her.

The recipe is actually very simple, but I’ll warn you it’s a time consuming and tiring process to cook them, especially if you don’t have a food processor!  Put it this way, I had only two reasons for buying a food processor and both of them were Polish recipes!  Firstly, so that I could make the Chruścik dough and secondly, so that I could make my own pasta for Pierogis and I don’t think I use it for anything else!  It took me about 2.5 hrs to cook up this batch.

So in the spirit of sharing I thought I’d give you the recipe for these melt in the mouth delights.  Why not have a go at making some Chruścik and help me honour my Babcia!

Happy baking one and all.

Wealie x

Chruścik – Pastry Twists Recipe

Just a quick note to say that in my picture above the amount created is double the amounts of the ingredients used in the recipe below.

Main Ingredients

250 g plain flour
1 tablespoon icing sugar
25 g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon Rum Flavouring
1 whole egg
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon sour cream
1 tablespoon of distilled malt vinegar

Ingredients for Cooking

Sunflower/Vegetable oil for deep frying
Icing sugar for dredging

Preparation

Mix together all the main ingredients in a large bowl or food processer until they form a rough dough, you may need to add additional flour to get right consistency.

Knead the dough for 15 – 20 mins until smooth.

Divide dough into 2 or 3 pieces and roll out each piece thinly (approx 5 mm depth).

Cut the dough into narrow strips and then cut across the diagonal to create individual diamond shapes.  Cut a slit through the middle of each diamond and push one point through the slit and pull gently to make the twist.

Heat oil in a deep frying pan, fry the twists until golden on both sides and drain on kitchen towels and then dredge with icing sugar.

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