Malassadas

The story

Malassadas are soft yeast doughnuts from Madeira, made from flour, eggs, sugar and milk and fried in rough rounds until golden. The name is usually read as mal-assada, badly cooked, a joke on their irregular shape. They are thought to descend from filhós and to be a product of the island's growing sugar industry in the sixteenth century. On Madeira they are a Carnival food: historically they were convent sweets made for Terça-feira Gorda, Fat Tuesday, so that households used up their lard and sugar before Ash Wednesday. In 2027 that Tuesday is February 9. Madeirans finish them with mel de cana, the island's sugarcane syrup; elsewhere they are rolled in sugar, and the Azores make their own malassadas at Carnival too. Workers from Madeira and the Azores carried the recipe to the sugar plantations of Hawaii in the 1870s. Leonard's Bakery opened there in 1952, and Fat Tuesday in Hawaii is still called Malasada Day, spelled with one s. Start the dough by late morning, and the first batch can come out of the oil by midafternoon; a plate of them goes with strong coffee.