Ah, Krapfen. In short: a cream- or jelly-filled fried round of yeast dough, often decorated, consumed during Fasching, the lead-up to Ash Wednesday. You may hear infidels call them Pfannkuchen (pancakes…wtf?) or Berliner (lol), but this is wrong. In Oberbayern you will be ridiculed and deservedly so.
Those aren’t even good pancakes. Meme stolen from Internets
In previous years I have gone on quests to collect Krapfen from every bakery in walking distance, to rate all the chocolate ones to determine who makes the best, and to accumulate a maximum number of flavors. This year I wasn’t going to make a fuss, but a Munich bakery chain opened a store next to Mr Radish’s office, and he joined their Krapfen Of The Week Club. Then he tried the flavor of the week from the chain bakery in front of the supermarket. Then we started panic-buying, because the season is so short this year…
So here, in chronological order, I present to you the 2024 Tour De Krapfen. There are bears in every picture because the Tour is well-liked by Stuffie Twitter.
December
We started off the season on St Silvester’s Day, with Aprikosenmarmelade, apricot marmalade, from my bread dealer at the Wochenmarkt. I could be happy just eating these once a week.
January
Filled with Nutella, or a reasonable facsimile.
Fancy-ass Nougat Krapfen, with chocolate frosting and a hazelnutty filling.
The “König Ludwig”, homage to the beloved Kini. Filled with “Bayerischer Creme und Prunk“–but who isn’t?
Pistachio, with pistachio cream filling.
Another fancy one from Munich, with vanilla filling. The face is molded sugar paste.
This was the first one that disappointed me; there wasn’t enough peanut flavor in the filling.
Blueberry and “white chocolate”, which just tastes like sweetened shortening to me.
Finally, a nice normal Hagebuttengelee (rose hip jelly) unit, from the Wochenmarkt. Breakfast of Champions!
February
Tiramisu. This one was disappointing; the biscuit was soggy, there wasn’t any chocolate, and the filling did not taste like tiramisu.
Blueberry-Vanilla, with two kinds of cream inside, and this one was fabulous. Real blueberries!
“It’s nearly the end and we haven’t had Baileys yet!” I had to go on an extra-long walk for this one.
Filled with Eierlikör, which I like, but I would have preferred powdered sugar instead of the crunchy shortening layer.
Plain chocolate, again with a Nutella-type filling. What’s special here is the cowboy puppet: In 2018, after I gushed about how cute the clown Krapfen in our neighborhood bakery were, Mr Radish went out and bought one for me. I bring him out every year now–in a new pastry, of course!
And on the very last day, raspberry cream filling. This bakery has the best dough of the bunch, there’s a bit of lemon in it, and that gives it a bright note the other doughs didn’t have.
And now it’s over.
Don’t think of it as “giving up” sugar for Lent, think of it as giving your pancreas a well-deserved rest.
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