Paczki Day At Evanston's Bennison's Bakery

EVANSTON, IL — For many in the Chicago Area, Fat Tuesday is Paczki Day, a day to celebrate the Polish pastry made of fried dough.

The tasty tradition began with a pre-Lenten need to use up supplies of lard and eggs, and the area's large population with Polish heritage has made Chicagoland a hotbed of paczki production, innovation and appreciation.

Bennison's Bakery in Evanston has been making paczki since 1938. Jory Downer, the bakery's second generation owner, is offering two new types of paczkis this year, a German chocolate flavor as well as a lemon curd paczki, which he said he has always wanted to make.

Bennison's is the only bakery in the area to cook its own lemon filling from frozen pureed shipped in from California, according to Downer.

On Saturday, Feb. 25, the bakery will again hold a paczki eating contest.

"We used to charge people to take part in the contest, and then we had prize money," Downer said. "Well, that got a little out of hand we were starting to get professional eaters in here that would just wipe everybody out."

This year, he said, there's no prize money, but instead there will be a charitable donation to local cancer charity Phil's Friends.

Orders for Paczki Day on Feb. 28 will be taken until close of business Monday at Bennison's, and whatever is leftover after Fat Tuesday will be sold by the end of the week, according to Downer.

Top photo: Paczki (Patch file.)