Today is Malassada Day!Amongst the many labels applied to the day before Lent begins, Malassada Day stems from the same gorge-yourself-crazy spirit of Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday and the like.
Things like sugar and lard were meant to be used up before the fasting of Lent began, and what better way to do this, so the São Miguel islanders thought, than to make copious amounts of delicious, delicious fried dough.
Malasadas1 are basically doughnuts, and hoo boy, are they good when fresh out of the pan!
My grandmother's always made them with a hole in the centre, but apparently the "traditional" way is to simply form a ball of dough, sans hole.
Want to fry up some of your own?
Here's my grandmother's recipe
Vavo's2 Malassadas
Ingredients
2 tbsp soft butter
1 tsp salt
12 eggs 1 cup sugar
sliced lemon rind
2 lbs flour (6 cups)
jar of Mazola oil
Instructions:
Put 2 packets of Fleischmann's yeast in 1/2 cup lukewarm water, for about 5 minutes
Stir yeast. Put in a big bowl.
Add everything, except flour, and mix with electric mixer. When soft and blended, add flour and mix by hand.
Let rise for around 4-5 hours.
Take small amounts, shaping them into doughnuts, and carefully putting them in a frying pan, filled with boiling oil.
Let both sides get golden brown (this doesn't take long at all!)
Remove, and coat with sugar.
Oh yes, and consume immediately.
Yum.
____________
1 Here's some info about Malassadas.
2 Vavo means grandma in Portuguese.
3 Image sourced from this site.
2 comments:
These look SO GOOD! What a great tradition, and fresh doughnuts are the best. I'm obsessed with Tiny Tom's doughnuts, and these look worlds better!
YUM!! I love these! I can't remember if I've mentioned it before or not, but the small town I grew up in has a large population of folks from Portugal (mostly the Azores) and their kids, who are our age, are the first generation born in the US. Anyway, whenever we would have any sort of "celebrate your culture" day at school, at least a couple of kids in my class would bring malassadas. Thank you so much for posting your grandmother's recipe!
Post a Comment