Papanasi | Doughnut | Romania | YouTube | Vegan

Hello my lovelies! Today we are exploring the wonderful world of Romanian

cuisine. I don't recall if I've mentioned this before but my dearest friend Ana has her origins from Romania and to honour her I wanted to share my take on a few dishes and make them vegan. I have experienced Romanian food first hand when Ana and I travelled to Romania for vacation and it certainly was an experience.

At the time I wasn't vegan and something I recall so vividly where their salad with fresh tomatoes and feta cheese. I had never tasted tomatoes like that before they where so juicy and packed with flavour. However this month I wanted to keep it sweet and we are making fried cheese doughnuts called Papanasi.

You can follow along below.

Makes around 6-8 doughnuts.

What you need for dough:

5 dl (2 cups) flour

5 dl (2 cups) cottage cheese (read below how to make it)

1 dl (0.4 cups) vegan heavy cream

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp vanilla sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

A few drops rum aroma

What you need to make cottage cheese:

250 gram firm tofu

2 1/2 dl (1 cup) vegan yoghurt

2 tbsp lemon juice

What you need for topping:

2 1/2 dl (1 cup) creme fraiche

2 1/2 dl (1 cup) runny jam

1 litre oil for frying

First we will make our vegan cottage cheese by adding tofu, yoghurt and lemon juice

into a food processor and mix until it looks coarse like cottage cheese.

Next we will work the cottage cheese, heavy cream, sugar, vanilla sugar, baking powder and a few drops of rum aroma together.

Once it looks combined add it to a kitchen machine along with the flour and work that in until it looks like a dough it should be a tad sticky. Pop a towel over and let the dough rest for 20 minutes.

Divide the dough into 10-12 pieces, roll each piece into a disc shape and cut out the

centre with a small round cookie cutter. The centre is what we will use for the

cute little hat the papanasi has. I ended up using my doughnut mould for this and actually added a bit more dough for the hats.

Before we we will get to deep frying pop out the creme fraiche and jam as they will

we easier to top off the doughnuts when they are room temperature.

In a deep pan add your oil and bring to heat and once it's ready pop in as many of

the discs as you can but leave room for them to "breath". Fry for 2-3 minutes on

each side. Rinse and repeat, do the same with the hats.

I allow them to dry off on some paper as they soak up quite a bit of oil.

To serve assemble the little hat where the hole is and dollop creme fraiche and jam on top. Now it's ready to be enjoyed.