The Persian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_%28pastry%29




I have a new quest. I made cupcakes last week. In trying to decide what kind of icing to use, I landed on raspberry. It made me think of the pink icing on Persians. For those of you who don't know, a persian is a doughnut that is unique to ontario - a specific bakery in Thunder Bay (Bennett's) gets the credit for creating them sometime in the first half of the 20th century.

So, since I was making raspberry icing, I remembered that my mom had once tried an experiment with using raspberry jello icing that apparently turned out pretty close (there is some debate as to whether the persian icing is strawberry or raspberry flavoured, and the recipe has been a secret for a long time)

I looked online to see if anyone has ever come up with a recipe that's close, and I discovered that it's still a secret. However, I did learn that it's based on another doughnut recipe called a 'pershing' which is a yeast doughnut that's cinnamon swirled and usually glazed. And I did find a recipe for those. I'm going to try it, hopefully with raspberry icing instead - and then maybe i won't have to go to Thunder Bay to eat one of these delicious things.