Ponczka Time!

Caleb Wojtalewicz spreads out freshly made ponczka on a table to cool as Scott Vuorinn fills them with prunes Friday as members of the St. Mary’s Torun Catholic Church in the town of Dewey carry on the pre-Lent Polish tradition of making ponczka. (DOUG WOJCIK/STEVENS POINT JOURNAL

I, Joan, regret that I never made ponczkas (pronounced POONCH kas)while our kids were growing up. It is a Polish Catholic tradition. Before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, the homemakers would make ponczkas. My mom made them every year. What a sight to see a big bowl of these big round brownish fried balls of dough dusted with sugar and filled with either dates, prunes or jam. They were best the first day.
So here is an article from my hometown newspaper about the current ponczka situation.
My folks have been getting them from the grocery store, instead of driving way out to the country churches.

January 23, 2010
http://www.stevenspointjournal.com/print/article/20100123/SPJ0101/1230537/Ponczka-baking-a-sweet-endeavor-for-church

Ponczka baking a sweet endeavor for church

By Cara Spoto
Journal staff
Bready and mildly sweet, ponczka -- Polish doughnuts filled with prunes or jelly -- are well known to people in Portage County, scores of them the ancestors of Polish immigrants who moved here more than a century ago.

For many of their families, the language and other cultural elements of Poland have faded with each generation, but somehow, ponczka have managed to stick around.
On Friday, dozens of St. Mary's Torun parishioners gathered in the church's basement in the town of Dewey with one clear goal: to make a lot of ponczka.
Gathered in the steaming hot kitchen, women stood around a small table rolling yellow balls of dough. Just feet away, kids poured flour and beaten eggs into churning bread mixers. Behind them, men boiled the doughnuts in large vats of oil, rotating each one carefully before draining and handing them off to a runner to be filled and bagged.

Several parishes in the region hold annual ponczka events, typically before Lent. St. Mary's has hosted its event for close to 35 years, church secretary Kristi Vuorinen said. The church typically fills 500 ponczka orders from residents each year. This year, they reached the 500 order mark by Tuesday -- a new record, Vourinen said.

Work on this year's batch of doughnuts began at 4 a.m., as women came into makethe first batches of dough. The church has used the same recipe for years -- one that only the bakers themselves and a few parishioners know.

At 10 a.m., things were in full swing, with school children running back and forth to collect doughnuts. Huge vats of jelly and prune butter sat on tables.
Marty Tepp, 67, of Hull has volunteered to make the ponczka for as long as she can remember. She said she remembers coming home from school to find her mother with plate of hot ponczka waiting for her.

"She would put the whole prune inside," Tepp said.

Marion Schultz, 71, of Dewey, has taken part in the event for as long as it has been held. Surrounded by two flour-covered grandchildren, 9- and 13-year-olds Paige and MacKenzie, Schultz said what she likes most about the event is spending time with everyone. She said what makes a perfect ponczka has everything to do the rising of the dough.

For 13-year-old Caleb Wojtalewicz, of Dewey, who spent much of the morning filing bags with doughnuts, the best kind of ponczka is jelly filled.
"I haven't had prune yet, and I need something in all this doughnut," he said.