Bingo and Bugnes

This weekend was the annual bingo weekend in Cormatin. The Saturday is the day we play all the “external” cards (a BIG thank you to everyone who contributed by buying cards from us) and Sunday is the day of the real bingo, when more than a hundred people, who travel from near and far, come to play for some very nice prizes. It is a big event financially for our little club and one we needed to be a success as our finances are getting quite precarious.

We have had an unusually warm January this year with no snow and precious little frost (only 7 days as opposed to the usual 25), so imagine our thoughts when we awoke on Sunday morning to see it was snowing. Are the weather gods out to destroy our club ? How many people were going to turn up for the bingo if it was snowing ? The prizes cost about 1,700 Euros, the ladies had spent all Saturday afternoon making 1,000 bugnes (small deep fried doughy things, a speciality of Lyon), so you can just imagine how much money we stood to lose. Memories of the October organised walk ran through my mind. Just to remind you of that dreadful event: the day of the walk was the only rainy day in October and instead of 300 people coming as usual, only 23 turned up, which meant we made a huge loss.

Anyway, we took all the prizes over to the bingo hall in the morning as planned and crossed our fingers as the sky went very dark. Fortunately, in the end, the bingo addicts did turn up, not as many as last year, probably only about 90, but we made a healthy profit over the whole weekend.

Interestingly one of the big success stories was the bugnes that we had made. They sold like hot cakes and by the second pause we had run out. All thousand of them went and people kept coming back for more. They actually contributed 50 of the 750 Euros profit we made during the weekend, not bad for a lump of dough !

Michèle our Bugnes Baroness from Lyon has kindly given me the recipe for me to share with you all. Try them covered in lots of icing sugar, the more the better.

For roughly 300 bugnes.
1 kg flour
8 eggs
150g melted butter
120g castor sugar
4 ½ sachets of baking powder (approx 45 grams)
3 sachets of vanilla sugar (20 – 25 grams)
2 pinches of salt
small glass of rum
milk

Mix all ingredients except the milk together, then add milk, whilst kneading, until the whole mix makes a firm, but flexible homogenous ball. Leave the mix overnight at room temperature, in a bowl covered with a tea towel. You will then have a sticky and difficult to handle blobby mix.

Flour a kitchen surface generously and break off about a quarter of the mix and roll it in the flour until you can handle the mix enough to roll it out. Roll it out until it is about 2 – 3 mm thick. Then using a pastry cutter, cut the pastry into diamonds about 8cm long by about 2 cm wide and roll the cutter down the middle of the diamond to cut a hole in the middle.

Deep fry in hot oil until they are golden brown. If they don’t puff up pretty quickly the oil is too cool and if they go brown quickly the oil is too hot.

Let them drain on kitchen paper and serve covered in icing sugar. They can be kept until the next day after frying if required, but if you do that, make sure they are not stacked too densely otherwise they will go a bit soggy.

Now doesn't that punnet look rather yummy? Enjoy !

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