SWEET TREAT TWIST
Jordynne Ropat, owner of Plant Joy, shows off a couple of her vegan paczkis Monday at the Little Foot Foods restaurant in Windsor just in time for Shrove Tuesday.
Paczki Day has gone vegan. Although by definition the deepfried Polish doughnuts were supposed to use up lard, eggs and sugar before Lent and fasting, at least two bakers in Windsor have created paczki without animal products.
“Having grown up in Windsor, Paczki Day is such a fun tradition and I would never want anyone to have to miss out on that,” said vegan Jordynne Ropat who started her vegan doughnut business Plant Joy last year.
She’ll deep fry her paczki in sunflower oil and add fillings. Her regular yeast-risen doughnut recipe doesn’t have eggs, butter or milk and she uses a little vegan margarine. Ropat, who grew up eating paczki and switched to a vegan diet a few years ago, said she thinks her paczki are as good as the traditional ones.
Paczki — the plural term pronounced “poonch-key” — are Polish doughnuts that were traditionally filled with prunes and now come with various jelly, lemon and custard fillings inside and powdered sugar outside. Paczki Day falls on Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday, which is before the start of Lent for Christians. The paczki party spilled over into Windsor decades ago from Hamtramak, Mich., where there’s a large Polish population. It’s not well-known past Windsor-Essex.
The response from vegan customers and those with egg or dairy allergies was so great for Plant Joy’s first try at Paczki Day that Ropat had to stop taking orders last week.
“Without vegan paczki I think you’d just kind of be watching from the sidelines and wishing you could participate,” Ropat said Friday. Vegans can line up Tuesday morning to buy paczki at the gluten-free bakery Healthy Creations in South Windsor and Lakeshore. Owner Chris Brecka has been selling gluten-free, dairy-free paczki for years and for the first time has added a vegan version by using an egg replacement in her gluten-free recipe. Interest in vegan products has jumped in the last six months, she said. It seems nobody wants to miss out on Paczki Day.
“The vegan people have arrived.” Healthy Creations plans to make more than 3,000 gluten-free paczki beginning Monday night after selling out of 1,100 paczki in 75 minutes last year, Brecka said. This year she didn’t take pre-orders and estimates she’ll make hundreds of the vegan ones.
A box of her six assorted paczki sells for $13.50.
For the masses, bakeries in Windsor and Leamington will be in a paczki-making frenzy Monday night and into Tuesday. Blak’s Bakery expects to make about 35,000 paczki. Customers began pre-ordering a month ago. “It just gets bigger and bigger every year,” owner Valerie Blak- Gill said Friday.
Although Blak’s was already making some of the Polish doughnuts last week, the main baking for Tuesday will start at 8 p.m. Monday and wind down 4 p.m. Tuesday. More than 40 people, including customers who volunteer to family members from London, Toronto and near Tobermory, pitch in. “It’s fun. Everybody looks forward to it.”
Tourism Windsor Essex Pelee Island created a local paczki guide online at visitwindsoressex.com/ event/windsor-essex-paczkiguide-2019.