Picking Out Paczki on Mardi Gras

It's Fat Tuesday--a time to treat yourself before the 40-day Lenten fast, in Catholic tradition.

In Niles, with its large Polish population, that often means paczki--those round, deep-fried doughnut-like creations filled with custard, preserves, or other confections.

"They're made with a yeast dough, and we use butter, margarine and oil in it. We use canola oil to fry them," said Bogna Solak, president and owner of which has one of its six locations at Oakton and Milwaukee in Niles. Its corporate facility is in Des Plaines, where most of the baking takes place.

Once the paczki are fried, Oak Mill has machines that inject any of nine fillings into them. They include rose petal and prune--the most popular in Poland--as well as apricot, strawberry, raspberry, poppyseed, Advocat (a liqueur), lemon and blueberry. The store also sells gourmet paczki, which are cut in half and filled with whipped cream and strawberries, blueberries or pineapple, and cream cheese paczki with fresh strawberries.

While Fat Thursday--the Thursday before Ash Wednesday--is paczki day in Poland, the American tradition of Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, has created an entire paczki weekend for Polish bakeries.

"Last year we sold 80,000 paczki over the weekend," Solak said, adding that was at all six locations. "The whole bakery smells like paczki."

The video at right shows customers buying paczki Monday; the store opens at 6 a.m. Tuesday.