Farébersviller: Hildegarde makes donuts every year to please her grandchildren
It’s Shrove Tuesday and if there’s one food to enjoy today, it’s the traditional carnival beignet. In Farébersviller, Hildegarde, who will be 87 next month, makes them every year to please her family (and especially her 7 grandchildren). We followed the manufacturing steps in her kitchen, accompanied by her granddaughter.
Sound N°1 – Farébersviller: Hildegarde makes donuts every year to please her grandchildren
Each year at carnival, Hildegarde prepares 2 to 3 batches of donuts. Delicacies acclaimed by his grandchildren…
“Grandma when are you making your donuts?” so I say: “If you come on Wednesday there are donuts” and in the morning I make donuts!
Have you ever taught someone how to make it?
No, the young people said: “Granny makes them so we don’t need to make them”
This morning, in the kitchen of his apartment in Farébersviller, his granddaughter Catherine is there to assist him.
You have to listen to the grandmother and follow her precise organization…
At home it’s like that (laughs)
No room for error!
It must be said that the technique is well established since the pastry chef has been making donuts for years.
At home my mother always made donuts. Gradually I watched and I learned like that.
Are the recipes written down somewhere or are they in your head?
They are in the head. Because I can’t read about the thing and do that, that annoys me. So I look and that’s all in there!
In there, therefore, there is yeast, eggs, sugar, butter, a little salt and…
A little bit of rum! And elbow grease, you have to work with that! I do sports myself (laughs)
Making donuts is sport, especially when you have to work the dough…
The dough is then cut and it will rest under sheets while it rises before baking… Finally, our bubbly granny takes care of cooking the donuts in simmering sunflower oil and her granddaughter covers the all sugar. That’s it, the donuts are cooked!
The donuts are delicious and Catherine is a little more impressed with her grandmother every day.
I don’t know where she finds this strength! It’s to make us happy I think. There’s no bargaining, I’ve never had better donuts than my grandmother’s.
