Pass the calories: Israelis line up for hot doughnuts
Pastry chef Nir Reichman describes Hanukka lines of thirty and forty people patiently waiting to purchase tasty sweets.
By HAGAY HACOHENUpdated: DECEMBER 13, 2017 08:50Festival of Lights - Sofganiut (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Israelis are rapidly shifting their attention to fancier and more complex doughnuts, claimed pastry chef Nir Reichman during an interview on Channel 12 morning edition on Wednesday.While the old-fashioned Hanukka doughnuts, fresh, jelly-filled with a white sugar coating, used to be the top earner for bakeries across the land during the Festival of Lights, bakers are now offering malabi [creamy pudding] filled doughnuts, vanilla doughnuts and chocolate doughnuts – and the pastries keep on evolving and changing each holiday season.“People come in droves,” explained Reichman, who is the pastry chef for the Roladin bakery, “and they line up patiently waiting to get a taste. ”The fatty, calorie-rich holiday food is a traditional Hanukka food because it is fried in oil, a major element in a holiday in which an oil jar overflowed and lit the temple menorah for eight days without being replenished.While tasty, there is no religious obligation to eat doughnuts on Hanukka. The only requirement is to light candles to remember the miracle.
