For a country that has some genuinely fantastic baked goods (if you haven't had authentic German breads or pastries, go to your phone book and find a bakery that advertises itself as either a Bäckerei or Konditorei and see what I mean), you'd think the Germans would be well-versed in the doughnut sciences, but that would be a mistaken assumption. Shame. Perhaps it's because filled doughnuts, known as krapfen (alternately Berliner or Fasnetsküchle) are not generally available year round in Germany and the lack of practice shows.Part of the run up to the countrywide pre-Lenten celebration known as Fasching (a sort of Mardi Gras), krapfen are basically filled doughnuts with a powdered sugar topping, and the fillings vary wildly, and seeming regionally. Traditionally it's a type of jam (apricot, plum and strawberry are the most popular) or vanilla creme, but I've heard of fillings like rose hip jam, eggnog creme, coconut cream, and weird stuff like chili & caramel, strawberry jam & vodka (known as a "Stalin") and even mustard (fasching will be described in another post, but it's basically a government-approved time to let one's hair down and do "crazy things," like ruining a damn doughnut). But how do they taste? Pretty lousy, actually. The Krapfen I've had are just deep fried flavorless white dough with a dollop of filling and a blizzard of powdered sugar on top. Lent is all about sacrifice I suppose; maybe you are supposed to sacrifice taste. And your hips too. "Regular" doughnuts are generally available year round but even the fresh baked stuff is several pegs below Hostess/Entenmann's level. Good news though: there are 30 Dunkin' Donuts locations in Germany... but the closest is 4.5 hours' drive away. Eh, I'm trying to lose weight-- these lousy krapfen ensure it.
The photo is a sign for regional bakery chain Der Beck. Tag means "day," so the sign is advertising filled doughnut day-- 3 for €3.30-- about $4.60 to the USA viewers. Isn't worth it.
3 comments:
Great post! You make that donut sound so crappy I HAVE to taste it, even with a gluten intolerance!
Yes, by all means, do come over-- come for the krapfen, stay for the beer. In the spirit of researching for the post, we did have 2 krapfen: A strawberry (at least I -think- it was strawberry) jam, and a Bailey's/chocolate cream. Terrible both times. Can't wait to have a proper doughnut when we come home now.
*sigh*. How I miss American doughnuts. It sounds like the French version is a little better, but yeah, they are about as good as entenmann's or any pre-packaged doughtnut. Here, they like to fill them with Nutella. I've never heard of a dunkin' donuts here in France, but I'm sure if there is one, it's in Paris.
I think the Germans do pastries much better than the French though. I hate even going into French pastry shops - it's all flavorless dough surrounding gobs of cream or mousse (or the other way around). Everything looks beautiful, but the actual eating of these things is disgusting.
And how about popcorn? I really, really hate it when I order popcorn and it's SWEET! And anyway, the cinemas here pretend that they make popcorn when there is no popcorn popper in sight and it's obvious that they just dumped out pre-packaged bags of popcorn in their display bins.
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