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Russian Fried Cakes
Scald 1 pint of milk, add 1 scant teaspoonful of salt and 1 tablespoonful of sugar; when lukewarm add I yeast cake dissolved in a little warm water and sufficient flour to make a drop batter and set aside to raise. When light and spongy add ½ of a cupful of butter creamed together with 1 cupful of sugar and 3 eggs, beat until thoroughly mixed, add sufficient flour to make a soft dough and knead for five minutes.
Return to the bowl, cover and keep in a warm place until light. Turn on a floured board, roll out quite thin and cut into three-inch circles. On 1/2 of these cakes place I small spoonful of apricot or any firm jam or marmalade. Cover with the remaining cakes and pinch each together securely. Cover with a floured cloth and let stand for twenty minutes, then drop, a few at a time, into smoking hot fat. When well browned and puffed up drain on unglazed paper and roll in powdered sugar.
A yeast-raised filled doughnut in two stages: a milk sponge, then an enriched dough. Nothing here is difficult, but the seal on each cake decides whether you get doughnuts or a pan of burning jam.
- Seal them properlyKeep the jam to a scant teaspoon and well inside the circle, brush or leave the rim free of filling, and press the two edges together firmly all the way round — a fork or fingertip crimp helps. Any gap opens in the fat and the jam sprays.
- The yeast cakeA compressed yeast cake of this period is usually reckoned equivalent to about one packet of active dry or instant yeast, roughly 2¼ teaspoons, though cake sizes varied. Dissolve it in warm water, around 105F; water much hotter than that will kill it.
- Scalding the milkThis was done to kill enzymes and bacteria in raw milk. With pasteurized milk it is unnecessary, though heating and cooling to lukewarm does no harm and speeds the sponge.
- Flour quantityThe recipe deliberately leaves this open. Expect roughly 1½ to 2 cups in the sponge and 4 to 5 more in the dough, for a soft, slightly tacky mass that pulls away from the bowl.
- Fat temperature"Smoking hot fat" is too hot by modern reckoning. Hold the fat at 350–365F and fry a few at a time; below that they soak, above that the outside colours before the centre sets. About 1½ to 2 minutes a side.
- Unglazed paperBrown paper or a paper bag was the drain of choice. Paper towels or a wire rack over a tray do the same job.
- SugaringLet them sit a minute before rolling in powdered sugar — straight from the fat the sugar dissolves into a syrupy film rather than clinging as a coating.
- YieldAbout 20 to 24 filled cakes from three-inch circles. They are best within a few hours; yeast doughnuts stale quickly.
Filled, yeast-raised fried cakes of this kind run through Central and Eastern European baking — Polish pączki, Russian and Ukrainian ponchiki, German Berliner — and several of them were traditionally tied to the last rich eating before Lent, when butter, eggs and sugar had to be used up. American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries picked up such recipes under loose national labels, "Russian" here signalling little more than foreign and slightly festive. Milk, flour, a yeast cake and a spoonful of jam were cheap, and deep fat turned them into something that read as a treat. The two-stage method — a loose sponge set to rise before the butter, sugar and eggs go in — was a common approach for enriched doughs, giving the yeast a head start on plain flour and milk before the fat slowed it down.