Polish Faworki (Chruściki Recipe) - Light & Crispy

Faworki, also called chruściki or Polish angel wings, are strips of thin dough twisted through themselves, fried for barely half a minute a side and buried in icing sugar. They belong to Tłusty Czwartek, Fat Thursday, the last blow-out before Lent.

Two things decide whether they come out light or hard, and neither of them is the frying: beating the rested dough with a rolling pin to force air through it, and rolling it thinner than feels sensible. Get those right and they shatter when you bite them. Get them wrong and you have made biscuits.

I grew up watching my babcia do exactly that, whacking the dough with a rolling pin and rolling it until you could see your hand through it. They are tied to one day in particular, and my guide to Polish food explains which dishes belong to which occasion.

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How to Make Polish Faworki, Step by Step

Full quantities are in the recipe card below. Two steps decide whether these come out light or hard: beating the rested dough, and rolling it thinner than feels sensible.

1. Make the dough. Mix the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl, then add the egg yolks, soured cream, vanilla and vodka and pour in the melted butter. Knead it. It will feel firm and slightly dry at first, but keep working it and after about ten minutes it should be smooth and elastic. A stand mixer does this happily. Wrap it in cling film and rest it for thirty minutes at room temperature, which lets the gluten relax so you can roll it properly thin later.

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2. Beat the dough with a rolling pin. Five minutes of whacking it, folding it over and whacking it again. Modern recipes skip this and it is the step that matters most: it drives air pockets through the dough and breaks the gluten down further, and that air is what makes faworki shatter rather than snap. My babcia never skipped it. If a batch ever comes out hard rather than light, this is the step to give more time to next round. The old Polish shortcut is a meat grinder, passing the dough through two or three times on medium holes, which does the same job and is what a lot of Polish home cooks reach for.
3. Roll it paper-thin, then cut and twist. Flour the surface and the pin lightly, but not heavily, or the dough takes the flour up and toughens. Roll to about 2 mm: lay the sheet over your hand and you should be able to make out its shape through the dough, and if you think it is thin enough, roll it a little more. Judging this is the single thing people get wrong, and thick dough is why faworki come out hard instead of shattering when you bite them. Cut into strips about 2.5 cm by 10 cm, make a slit down the centre of each and pull one end through to make the twist. Let them sit for a few minutes while the oil heats, which helps them hold their shape.

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4. Fry at 175°C, a few at a time. Use a neutral oil, so sunflower, vegetable or rapeseed. Olive oil is the wrong choice here because it smokes lower and leaves a savoury note that fights the icing sugar; lard is the traditional Polish fat and gives the cleanest flavour of all if you can get it. Fill the pan no more than a third to halfway, because hot oil rises when cold dough goes in and an overfilled or crowded pan is how it boils over. Keep a lid within reach, and never move a pan of hot oil. Shake the loose flour off each strip before it goes in, since dusting flour carried into hot oil is what makes it foam, darken and smell burnt. No thermometer? A scrap of dough should bubble immediately and float. Fry 30 to 40 seconds a side, turning once, until golden and puffed with small bubbles on the surface, and let the oil come back up to temperature between batches, which is why the thermometer earns its place rather than frying to a rhythm. Lift them out with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper.
5. Dust with icing sugar and serve. Sift the icing sugar over once they are barely warm. Too hot and it melts into a syrup; stone cold and it will not cling. Serve them the same day, because faworki are at their crispiest and best on the first.

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Why There Is Vodka in the Dough

One tablespoon, and the recipe card lists it as optional, which is the honest way to describe it. The two things that decide whether faworki come out light are the beating and the thinness. The vodka is a small help on top of those rather than the thing that makes them work.

What it does is take water out of the equation. Alcohol boils at about 78C against water at 100, so it leaves the dough faster once the strips hit the oil, and a spoonful of spirit is a spoonful less water going into the flour to build gluten. A dough with a little less water in it rolls thinner without springing back at you, and it comes out of the pan crisp rather than heavy with oil.

You will not taste it. A tablespoon across the whole batch is gone long before they come out of the oil, so these are fine for children.

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Equipment You’ll Need

Faworki are a deep-fry, so the thermometer is the one that matters most.

Ingredient Substitutions

• Sour cream thick natural yoghurt works, as long as it is creamy and not sharp. Greek-style is the safest choice. Avoid anything thin or watery, because the dough is balanced around a fairly stiff cream.
• Vodka the traditional Polish choice is spirytus, which is nearly pure alcohol and evaporates even faster. Plain white vinegar is the standard non-alcoholic swap and does a similar job on the gluten. You can leave it out altogether and still get good faworki, they will simply be a touch less brittle.
• Sunflower oil lard, smalec, is what Polish kitchens traditionally fry these in and it does give a cleaner, less greasy result with a faintly savoury edge. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works fine.
• Plain flour this is not a recipe for strong bread flour, which builds too much gluten and fights you when rolling. Plain flour is the right choice.
• Butter it is only 25 g and it is there for tenderness rather than flavour, so a neutral oil can stand in if you need it dairy-free, along with the yoghurt swap above.

Recipe Card for Polish Faworki

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Storing Faworki

Faworki are at their absolute best within a few hours of frying, and they are meant to be. That said, they keep for two or three days if you store them properly, and the way you store them matters more than how long.

Never put them in a sealed plastic container or a plastic bag. They give off a little moisture as they sit, plastic traps it, and by morning your crisp faworki have gone leathery. Polish kitchens keep them in an open container, a cardboard box, or a tin lined with kitchen paper, so air moves around them. A sheet of kitchen paper between the layers helps take up the last of the frying oil too.

They do not freeze once fried, as they lose their snap completely. If yours have softened, five minutes in a low oven will bring most of the crispness back, then dust them with fresh icing sugar.

FAQ for Polish Faworki

What are faworki?

Light, crispy Polish pastry ribbons dusted with icing sugar, traditionally made around carnival time before Lent.

Why add vinegar or alcohol to the dough?

A little spirit or vinegar relaxes the dough so it rolls very thin and fries up crisp and bubbly, not tough.

Why are my faworki not crispy?

Roll the dough very thin and keep the oil hot (about 170-180C). Too-thick dough or cool oil makes them chewy.

How do I store them?

Keep them in an open container, a cardboard box or a tin lined with kitchen paper, never sealed plastic, and dust with fresh icing sugar just before serving.

How do I get faworki really thin and crispy?

The thinner the dough, the lighter and crispier the faworki. Roll it as thin as you can, or use the old trick of pressing the rested dough through a meat grinder (maszynka) a couple of times - it comes out beautifully thin and airy. A stand mixer with a dough hook also does the hard kneading for you in about 10 minutes, with no beating by hand.

Can I make the dough the day before?

Yes, though it is not how I usually do it. Wrap it well and keep it in the fridge overnight, then let it come back to room temperature before you roll it, or it will fight you. One thing to expect: the dough often turns slightly slippery after a night in the fridge, which is normal and does not affect the finished faworki. Fresh dough is a little easier to handle, so if you are making these for Fat Thursday morning I would still make the dough that day.

Can I freeze the dough?

You can, and it is a genuinely useful thing to do since this dough takes real work. Wrap it tightly, freeze for up to a month, and thaw it overnight in the fridge followed by an hour on the worktop. Give it a short beating with the rolling pin again before rolling, because freezing knocks some of the air out. Fried faworki, on the other hand, do not freeze at all well and come back soft.

Can I use natural yoghurt instead of sour cream?

Yes, provided it is thick and creamy rather than sharp or runny. Greek-style yoghurt is the closest match. Thin, watery yoghurt will slacken the dough and make it hard to roll thinly, which then costs you the crispness.

Do I have to use the vodka?

No. It is marked optional in the recipe for a reason and you will still get good faworki without it. What it does is evaporate faster than water and slow down gluten development, so the dough rolls more easily and the finished faworki are that bit more brittle. If you would rather not use alcohol, a tablespoon of plain white vinegar does much the same job, and traditional Polish recipes have used both for generations.

What do I do with the four leftover egg whites?

Do not bin them. They keep in the fridge for up to four days in a sealed jar, and they freeze for months, which is the easy answer. Four whites is exactly the right amount for a batch of meringues, and they also make an excellent omelette, a white-only scramble, or the binder for coconut macaroons. If you are frying faworki for Fat Thursday, whites are also what you want for icing on other bakes.

Can I bake faworki or make them in an air fryer instead of frying?

You can, but be realistic about the result. Baked at around 170C for ten minutes or so, or air-fried with a light spray of oil, they will be crisp and perfectly pleasant. What they will not be is faworki as a Pole would recognise them, because the puff and the blistered, shattering texture come from hot fat hitting thin dough. If you want the real thing, fry them. If you want a lighter biscuit, bake them.

Why did mine soak up so much oil?

Three usual culprits, and all are fixable. The oil was not hot enough, so give it time to reach 175C and let it recover between batches. The pan was overcrowded, which drops the temperature the moment the dough goes in. Or the dough was rolled too thick, so it sat in the oil far longer than the thirty seconds a side it should need. Greasy faworki are nearly always a temperature problem rather than a recipe problem.

Faworki, chruściki, chrusty, angel wings: what is the difference?

They are all the same thing. Faworki is the name you will hear most in central Poland, chruściki or chrusty are common elsewhere and translate roughly as “brushwood” or “twigs”, which is what the tangled fried strips look like. English-speaking countries often call them angel wings. Different regions, different kitchens, one recipe, and every Polish family will tell you their name is the correct one.

A Few Words from the Chef

For me, Fat Thursday is more than just a day of indulgence - it’s a taste of my childhood. I remember waking up to the smell of freshly fried pączki and faworki filling the kitchen, and my babcia dusting them with sugar and making sure we all had more than enough to eat.

In Poland, this day is a celebration of tradition, family, and food. No one worries about calories, and the goal is simple: enjoy as many sweets as possible before Lent begins. Whether it’s the fluffy, jam-filled pączki, the delicate, crispy faworki, or a plate of apple-filled racuchy, each bite brings back memories of home.

Fry a batch on Fat Thursday and you will understand why nobody in Poland counts anything that day.

If you try any of these recipes, I’d love to hear about it - leave a comment and let me know how they turned out. Smacznego!