Sufganiot: Jelly Doughnuts for Hanukkah

Jelly doughnuts are a Hanukkah tradition, one that I for one think should have much greater exposure. Hanukkah commemorates the 165 B. C. victory of the Maccabees against the much larger Seleucid empire. The Jews had had their religion outlawed, and their temple desecrated. After their victory, the Jews proceeded to purify the temple, only to discover that there was only enough consecrated, pure, oil to light the temple lamp for a day. They lit the lamp, and sent a messenger to procure more oil. Miraculously, the lamp continued to burn for eight days, thus inspiring the eight-day "festival of lights," Hanukkah. And yes, there is a jelly doughnut connection.

As commemoration of that miracle, there is a tradition of cooking with oil during Hanukkah (for other explanations of the tradition, look here). Jews of Eastern European extraction often serve fried potato pancakes, latkes. But for many Israelis, Hanukkah means jelly doughnuts. Like latkes, the doughnuts, in the form of small round balls of dough, are fried, filled with jelly or other sweet fillings, and dusted with sugar.

In Israel, bakers start making sufganiot (pronounced "soof-ghani-oat") as much as a month before Hanukkah officially starts. Fortunately, they're easy enough to make that you don't have to start that early, though you might want to. A few tips before I send you off to the recipes:

• It much easier to fill a sufganiya ball if you have a kitchen syringe, or an icing tip of the sort you'd use to make cream puffs or eclairs. If not, make a slit in the side of the sufganiya, and use a small spoon.
• You're going to be cooking these in hot oil; you might want to make the kitchen off limits to small children for a bit.
• Sufganiot are best eaten fresh; if you have to make them ahead of time, pop them in a warm oven for a minute, to re-heat them.
• The traditional fillings are jelly; particularly strawberry and raspberry, but Nutella, custard, lemon curd, and ricotta or cottage cheese have been successfully consumed by many.

Now for the recipes! This is a basic, easy to follow recipe. This one uses cottage cheese as a filling. This recipe uses the traditional method of joining two rounds of dough, sandwiching the filling—no kitchen syringe needed! This recipe makes a very large quantity of sufganiot. This sufganiot recipe is parve. Here's a sufganiot recipe designed for a bread machine.