Papanasi – Romanian curd doughnuts

Romanian papanasi is by far my favorite desert. Any desert containing curd, in fact, is very delicious.

Now about this curd… it is not easy to be found in all the countries, for example Spain (update – it seems they have something similar called “requeson”, but it is very moist for what we need for papansi). So after having enough of searching for it, I realized I can make it myself. All I needed is to boil 1l of whole milk, squeeze half a lemon in it and that’s it! 135 grams of curd after draining the liquid in a towel.

And this is the story of how many mornings from now on will start with the delicious curd doughnuts.

Here’s how easy it is to make them!

Papanasi
Servings: 2
Preparation time: 10 min
Cooking time: 7 min
Difficulty: easy

Ingredients

• 200 g of curd (from approximately 1.5 l of whole milk)
• 30 g of flour
• 20 g of semolina (can be done without too, but you need to add flour instead)
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 pack of vanilla sugar (7 g)
• 1 egg
• a pinch of salt
• 1 lemon (the juice for the curd and the a bit of peel in the dough)
• oil for frying
• sour cream and jam for decorating

Directions

1. Mix the flour, semolina, sugar, pinch of salt and baking powder together.
2. In a separate bowl mix the curd with the egg yolk and the lemon skin.
3. Combine the dry bowl with the curd bowl.
4. Mix the egg white until it gets foamy and combine it with the rest of the ingredients.
5. Form two doughnut shapes and two ball shapes like in the picture below. Important: you need to use oil on your hands to be able to shape them and maneuver them:
   
6. Start frying the papanasi in the preheated deep pan with enough oil to cover them at 150-160 C. The total frying time is at least 7 min, but you need to turn them on the other side every other minute so that the frying is even.
   

   

   
   Alternatively, for a healthier option, you can simply boil them. They will not look as good and not taste as awesome, but it will give 85% of the deliciousness and probably 85% less calories :P:
   

   
7. Cover them with sour cream (that can be thinned with some water if it’s too thick) and a sour jam preferably. The best jams are black currant jam, blueberry jam or sour cherry jam. But I only had my strawberry jam and it was still soooo good.
   

   strawberry jam

   

   sour cherry jam

   

   texture with flour only

   

   texture with semolina included
   You should definitely try the Romanian papanasi!