Red reverie and jelly filled donuts in history

I don't know the name of this cultivar shrub, it was here when we bought this place, but I love its red, brilliance that we have not seen in such abundance for several years.  Actually it has been about six years since it displayed such glorious color.  All over town these bushes are showing bright red providing refuge for cardinals.  We think it must have liked the hot summer which we did not or perhaps the dryness, also not so good, as we are below normal rainfall.  Not knowing what it  likes and doesn't like makes it an easy keeper, it gets only a delicate pruning which I do to keep it from overgrowing its space and towering above the back deck rail and hiding our view of bird feeders from our kitchen windows.  Several years ago Jerry pruned it too heavily I thought and it pouted that year with barren limbs and then cherishing its leaves through autumn with not a flicker of  red and then barren for winter.  I have made it my bottle bush for a few years and you can see some still reside there, awaiting removal for the winter. 

Some sunny mornings and especially  later afternoons, the glow from the shrub combines with the reflection from the sun light on the red deck red and the result is pure radiation of a warming scarlet glow that makes me smile from the window and feel that all is right with the world.  I have one photo here to show that red deck although I could not capture the glow, the warm fuzzy feeling it gives.  This deck was once a  dark stately brown, but when Jerry was repainting  he asked, "what color?" and I chose red, to go with the new back door.  I love a splash of red here and there, outside is not immune to my favorite accent color that I do not relegate to only Valentines or Christmas.  I don't know when my red choice started but as far as I can remember I have always liked a flash of red, a vibrant alive color, stimulating and tantalizing and busy maybe.   

This morning after church, on my way home, I stopped to pick up some bananas and there nearby were the Sunday morning donuts.  Well this was our anniversary weekend, 45 years yesterday, and Jerry likes donuts now and then, so I thought I should pick up some for him.  I am not  a donut person, preferring pastries or cinnamon rolls (no icing please) for my infrequent indulgence in too many calorie land.   But there  adjacent to the donuts this morning were one of what I consider life's little pleasures, that which must be denied lest no clothes fit, the smell of freshly baked and generously  iced red jelly filled donuts.  I could not resist.  while Jerry enjoys the old fashioned style donut, I can avoid those easily.  But how long has it been since I have  enjoyed a real jelly donut, at least a year, maybe two?  Not today, this would mark a celebration weekend,  and so these fresh, still warm creatures went home with me along with his donuts and oh yes, those bananas for my yogurt. 

This scrumptious ooey gooey treat which dripped jam down my hand would be my lunch along with a good cup of coffee; vowing to work off the calories outside, I savored each bite. Jerry does not like jelly donuts and thinks it is gross to have jam on hands, but he was not me as a kid and he did not have my polish grandmother.  It took me back to childhood, and my grandma, Rose,  who loved her pastries and who made those wonderful polish jelly filled donuts, paczki only on special holidays, Easter and  very special celebrations. I thought back to how happy I was when she was baking and would let me taste first, while teasing my granpap that I got the first bite.I thrived from such loving grandparents, doting really, but none the less adding to my security that life was good and the world was mine however I chose to meet it.  I felt that way today eating that jelly donut or at least that life is often how we meet whatever ringers come our way. 

I was curious about jelly filled donuts because I know several eastern Europeans claim them, so when I googled before staring this piece I was not surprised to see that indeed there is a rich history to this delicacy.   Although Germany is given credit for  their invention, we know that Germany encompassed many lands through history so it is understandable that poles, russias and others would have their versions.  In 1485, the cookbook Kuchenmeisterei (Mastery of the Kitchen) was published in Nuremberg, Germany. In 1532, it was translated into Polish as Kuchmistrzostwo. Besides serving as a resource for post medieval central European cooking and being one of the first cookbooks to be run off Johannes Gutenberg‘s revolutionary printing press, this tome contained what was then a revolutionary recipe: the first record of a jelly doughnut, “Gefüllte Krapfen.” This early version consisted of a bit of jam sandwiched between two rounds of yeast bread dough and deep-fried in lard. (My grandma friend hers in ht lard too!) Whether the anonymous author actually invented the idea or recounted a new practice, the concept of filling a doughnut with jam spread across the globe.  How about that, the jelly filled donut is ancient.  Something that has endured this long cannot be that bad regardless of a calorie count ranging  from 260 to 320!  That's a lot of steam to work off, but I did so today.

More  information about my treat led me to President John F Kennedy.  Even today's newspaper had a front page article about the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's challenge and our brink of nuclear war with Russia.   I have just finished reading O'Reilly's "Killing Kennedy" which I will review in my other blog. (Loved that book by the way, loved that president too who was my first political hero.)   But read on to what else I learned today about jelly filled donuts and see if you remember JFK calling himself one.  

Today most versions of  jelly doughnuts have a sweet interior, but  the original filled doughnuts were  packed with meat, fish, mushrooms, cheese, or other mixtures. At that time, sugar was still very expensive and rare in Germany, so savory dishes were much more practical. In the sixteenth century, the price of sugar fell with the introduction of Caribbean sugar plantations. Soon sugar and, in turn, fruit preserves proliferated in Europe. Within a century of the jelly doughnut’s initial appearance in Germany, every northern European country from Denmark to Russia adopted the pastry, although it was still a rare treat generally associated with specific holidays. In my Polish family paczki were made for  Easter and  holidays, special times only...Much later, someone in Germany invented a metal pastry syringe with which to inject jelly into already fried doughnuts, making the treat much easier and neater, and in the twentieth century, machines were developed to inject doughnuts in mass production.

Since at least the early 1800s, Germans had called jelly doughnuts "Berliners". According to a German anecdote, in 1756 a patriotic baker from Berlin was turned down as unfit for Prussian military service, but allowed to remain as a field baker for the regiment. Because armies in the field had no access to ovens, he began frying doughnuts over an open fire, which the soldiers began calling after the baker’s home, Berliners. The term soon became narrowed to denote only filled krapfen. Thus technically John F. Kennedy’s famous declaration at the Berlin Wall, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” means “I am a jelly doughnut.”

By the end of the century, jelly doughnuts were also called Bismarcken, after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck Due to the large number of central European immigrants, jelly doughnuts are known as bismarcks in parts of the American Upper Midwest, in Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada, and even in Boston, Massachusetts. In Manitoba, they are called jam busters. In Britain, they became jam doughnuts. And in general American parlance, they are jelly doughnuts. Poles named jelly doughnuts paczki (flower buds). Polish Jews fried these doughnuts in schmaltz or oil instead of lard and called them ponchiks. In certain areas of Poland, they became the favorite Hanukkah dessert. A doughnut without a filling in Yiddish is a donat. Some Australian Jews, many of whom emigrated from Poland, still refer to jelly doughnuts as ponchiks. Polish immigrants brought ponchiks to Israel, along with the custom of eating them on Hanukkah.

    So this very special treat today took me back to childhood  and then back through medieval times; now that is a scrumptious bit with a history as rich as its calorie count.   I wish you a special treat that brings as much pleasure as today's jelly filled gave me.   A special thanks to the website which provided The History of the Jelly Doughnut, Sufganiyah, Leite's Culinaria