For most people, Mardi Gras immediately conjures the images of drunk partiers, King cakes, and colorful beads. For me, it's all aboutKarneval, the German celebration of the holiday.
Also calledFaschingandFastnacht, GermanKarneval, AKA Carnival, is just a racy in Deutschland as in NOLA, complete with tons of booze, revealing outfits, and all-night celebrations. But the emphasis is much more on the parades, complete with fancy costumes. But as a kid growing up in the Western German city of Mainz—where some of the largest Carnival festivities are held—it was all about the slew of candy we'd collect as the children's parade floats passed by.
My sister and I, the biggest fans of the dress-up ever, were thrilled at a second chance (after Halloween, of course) to wear costumes and collect sweets, and we'd crowd near the parade, dressed as clowns, witches, or cowboys, hoping to fills our pillowcase sacks to the brim. It was one of our favorite times of year.
As an adult living in Berlin, I visit Cologne, home to another big Carnival celebration, to explore the holiday beyond my rose-tinted childhood memories. Although the grapefruit beers (a combo of grapefruit juice and beer thathelps facilitate the all-day drinking) and disco-ball dance parties were fun, I was most attracted to the bakeries and their rows and rows of doughnuts. A Fat Tuesday treat, these deep-fried delights signify one last chance at indulgence before the self-restraint of the Christian Lenten season.
Similar to New Orleans' beignets and thePolishPączkitreat, these doughnuts (calledKrapfenorBerlinersin German) could be stuffed with all sorts of fillings—vanilla cream, custard, chocolate—although it's most common to find them filled with jelly and dusted with powdered sugar. But even though they're definitely super-rich, don't expect to find a sugar bomb here—even though the yeasted dough is packed with flavor and crispy from a good dunk in frying oil, the doughnuts aren't candy-sweet.
Now that I live in New York, thatKarnevalparade seems far away, but I know what I'll be making to celebrate Mardi Gras on Tuesday: ThisKrapfenrecipe. I was skeptical about the method—sandwiching two dough circles between jellybeforefrying—but it was fun to watch the two sides poof up in the frying oil into balloons, and I only had one or two duds that spilled jelly from their middles (and they still tasted fine). In fact, they tasted just as sweet as I remembered.
