The traditional Romanian fried doughnuts – papanasi are made with cottage cheese and topped with smetana and jam.
These papanasi or Romanian fried donuts/doughnuts are the best donuts ever!!! Soft yet crunchy, oozing with sour cream and blueberry jam, every bite is a complete delight. No wonder they are the most popular Romanian dessert.
I don't often make doughnuts myself, but when I crave them, I make this papanasi recipe (pronounced papanash); it is so good! And I sometimes make the boiled ones - papanasi fierti.
Featured comment:
Maureen: Just got done making it. Followed the directions to the letter and it turned out perfect !! Thank you and my neighbor, thank you! ( she is from Romania and I just met her in our apartment building ...thought we would give her a taste of home).
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What are papanasi?
They are a typical Romanian dessert, basically cheese doughnuts. You can fry them like in this recipe or boil them and serve them coated with sugared breadcrumbs.
Fried papanasi is a dessert you will probably find in every Romanian restaurant. If you try them once, you will remember them for the rest of your life, and you will probably look for a papanasi recipe and try to make them yourself at home. They are that good!
Recipe ingredients
Cheese: The recipe uses Romanian brânză de vaci, or cow's cheese, which is fresh, low in fat, high in protein, and has a mild taste similar to cottage cheese. However, brânză de vaci is typically unavailable outside Romania.
My cousin Georgiana suggested using cottage cheese instead, and it worked great, though I had to adjust the flour amount. She warned me that the dough would be soft and sticky, but I found the German cottage cheese too watery compared to brânză de vaci. After realizing this, I added just enough flour to make the dough workable, and the papanasi turned out wonderfully.
Smetana is a traditional Romanian and Eastern European dairy product similar to crème fraîche. It’s made by souring heavy cream and has a fat content of 10% to 30%. I usually buy the German version (Schmand) with 20% fat or the smetana from the Russian store, which is closer to the Romanian version. If you can’t find smetana, crème fraîche is a good substitute.
Blueberry jam or another runny jam for serving. It has to be a runny jam with whole fruits, as thicker jams or jellies won’t work; they won't slide down the sides of the papanasi.
See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.
How to make papanasi?
- Step #1: Drain the excess water from the cottage cheese.
- Step #2: Combine cottage cheese, eggs, rum aroma, granulated sugar, and vanilla sugar. Use an immersion blender to blend the ingredients into a rough paste. The cottage cheese should remain slightly chunky to keep the cheese balls delicate.
- Step #3: Mix flour with baking soda, then add to the cheese mixture. Knead lightly to form a ball. The dough should be slightly sticky but manageable. Add more flour only if absolutely necessary.
- Step #4: To form the donuts, divide the dough into 9 balls. Roll 8 of the balls into thick sausages and join the ends to create circles with holes in the middle. Use the last ball to make 8 small balls for topping the papanasi.
- Step #5: Fry only two or three papanasi at a time, depending on your pan size. Avoid overcrowding; the papanasi should have enough space to move around freely. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Turn the doughnuts with a slotted spoon a few times while frying until the papanasi are golden brown.
Tip: Use enough oil to have about 10 cm (4 inches) in the pot. To check the temperature, insert a toothpick into the oil; if bubbles form around it, the oil is ready for frying the papanasi.
How to serve them?
They are best served immediately while still warm, and they would not be papanasi if not topped with smetana and a runny, sweet blueberry jam.
Papanasi are usually served with blueberry jam, but any jam works well - sour cherry, blackberry, or black currant freezer jam are great alternatives. The jam should slide down the sides of the papanasi and create little pools on the plate. Yummm!
Romanian Doughnuts – Papanasi Recipe
Ingredients
- 500 g cottage cheese 1.1 lbs/ 2 ¼ cups
- 2 eggs
- a few drops rum aroma optional
- 75 g granulated sugar ⅓ cup + 1 tablespoon
- 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar Note 1
- 230-250 g all-purpose flour 8 – 9 oz / about 2 cups, Note 2
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- vegetable oil for frying the doughnuts, Note 3
- 250 g smetana or crème fraiche to serve, 1 cup
- whole fruit runny blueberry jam to serve, Note 4
Instructions
- Drain the excess water from the cottage cheese. 500 g cottage cheese/ 1.1 lb/ 2¼ cup
- Blend: Place the cottage cheese in a bowl. Add the eggs and the rum aroma, the granulated, and vanilla sugar. With an immersion blender, blend the ingredients until you obtain a rough paste. The cottage cheese should not be turned into a smooth paste, just blended a little bit to make the cheese balls a little more delicate.2 eggs + a few drops rum aroma + 75 g granulated sugar/ ⅓ cup + 1 tablespoon + 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
- Dough: Mix about 230 g/ 8 oz of the flour and baking soda. Add them to the cheese mixture. Mix with a spoon. Flour the working surface and your hands generously. Turn the dough onto the floured surface and knead it lightly to form a ball. The dough should still be somewhat sticky yet manageable. Add the remaining flour only if absolutely necessary, only if the dough sticks so much that you cannot work with it at all.230-250 g all-purpose flour/ 8 – 9 oz / about 2 cups + 1 teaspoon baking soda
- Form donuts: Divide the dough into 9 balls. Roll 8 of the balls into thick sausages and unite the sausage ends to get a circle with a hole in the middle. Use the last ball to make 8 little balls, which will be used to top the papanasi.
- Heat oil: In the meantime, heat the oil in a pot. Use enough oil to have about 10 cm/ 4 inches of it in the pot. To check if the oil has reached the right temperature, insert a toothpick in the oil; if blisters are forming around the toothpick, you can start frying the papanasi.vegetable oil
- Fry: Only fry two or three papanasi at a time, depending on the size of your pan, do not overcrowd the pan; the papanasi should be able to move around freely. Turn the heat down to medium-low. Turn the doughnuts with a slotted spoon a few times in between and fry until the papanasi are golden brown. It took me about 5 to 7 minutes for one batch, but keep a close look and take them out as soon as they have a nice golden color. Or leave them longer if necessary. The little balls will need less time, about 3-4 minutes or so.
- Remove excess oil: Place them on plates lined with paper towels and dry them to absorb some excess fat.
- Serve warm topped with smetana and blueberry jam. Place the little balls on top and top them with a bit of smetana and jam as well.250 g smetana + whole fruit runny blueberry jam
Notes
- Substitute vanilla sugar with a little vanilla extract.
- Measurements: I recommend using a digital kitchen scale to measure the ingredients (the Amazon affiliate link opens in a new tab).
- Oil: Use enough oil to have about 4 inches/ 10 cm of it in the pot.
- Jam: Use a runny kind of jam, preferably with whole berries or chopped fruit pieces in it, something a bit tart like sour cherry, blackberry, black currant jam, etc.
Manuela says
Hi Adina,
Brînza de Vaci translates more closely to Farmers Cheese - which can be found pretty much everywhere in the US.
Heather says
Really delicious! I am in the US. The adaptations that I made were that I used full fat small curd cottage cheese and I drained it in a sieve for a couple of hours, then put it on a paper towel. It was pretty dry. Then for the sugar sachet I used 1 T of sugar and 1t vanilla. I mixed the sugar and cottage cheese in my electric mixer first (instead of a blender), then I added the rest. Surprisingly, I did not need as much flour as the recipe called for (I remembered that it should be a bit sticky)! I added the zest of 1 lemon instead of the rum extract. This was so simple and delicious. I cant wait to make it again! Thanks for a great recipe.
Adina says
So happy to hear it.
Ron says
seriously....this recipe needs help for an American audience.
What is rum aroma, how does it differ from flavoring and extract, and if substitutions are OK, what is the amount of the subs?
What is a "cachet" of vanilla sugar?? In cooking a sachet is usually an aromatic made of herbs wrapped in cheesecloth and added to a boiling or simmering liquid. But it is then removed. This recipe calls for the sachet to added to the dry ingredients and blended, suggesting it will remain.
Cottage cheese...I am guessing small curd? Low-moisture? Drained? I can imagine the recipe for a doughnut would want large curd and the liquid cottage cheese is packaged in.
Can you improve this recipe but giving more detailed information?
Adina says
I will try to clarify that, but I definitely think you are overthinking it or not thinking enough about it. Rum flavor/ aroma - if you can't find my product, read the label on your product and use it accordingly; it's the safest way to go about it, as products can differ greatly from one country to another. And when it comes to extracts and stuff, everybody knows you only need a tiny amount. I cannot possibly give substations for everything because I don't know all the products in this world; a bit of self-responsibility should be implicit.
Definition of sachet - the first answer when you google it:
BRITISH
a small sealed bag or packet containing a small quantity of something.
"a sachet of sugar"
So it is a small packet of something and should be more than obvious that, being made of paper, cloth, plastic, or whatever; you just open it and use the contents, and you don't blend the paper into the ingredients. I have never read a recipe stating: the paper bag should be discarded and not be added to the food, everybody knows that already.
A sachet contains about 1 tablespoon of vanilla sugar, if you have just 1/2 of a tablespoon or even 2 instead won't change the recipe much.
The cottage cheese question I can understand; I didn't think to elaborate on that because we only have one kind of cottage cheese around here; it comes in low-fat or full-fat and I use the full-fat version for baking. I suppose it's small curd and rather dry (but I don't have a comparison); there is only a tiny amount of liquid in the container (about 1/2 tablespoon) which I discard. I don't know why you think that large curd with lots of liquid would be the obvious choice, I would think exactly the other way around. If you only have the large curd, drain it, and mash the curd with a fork until it looks a bit like in the images belonging to this recipe.
I hope this helps. Have a nice day.
Bumblebee says
It's not smetana , it's smantana, corect your article
Adina says
No need to correct it, thanks, it's right the way it is.