It’s pączki day — ask for these sinful Fat Tuesday pastries by name. And certainly don’t call them doughnuts.

“‘Pączki.’”

— Overheard in the bakery line

It’s Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, the day of indulgence before the Christian fast known as Lent in the lead-up to Easter.

For urban centers with large Polish and Polish-American populations, including Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Chicago, indulgence often means deep-fried pączki. Or, more likely, a dozen.

Proper pronunciation of these sinful, traditional jelly- or creme-filled pastries, at least among non-Polish speakers, incites a debate only rivaled by the fight over which bakery does them best.

Most people land somewhere around “POONCH-key.”

But add in local dialect, or the effects of other Fat Tuesday imbibing, and “POWNCH-key” or “PAUNCH-key” sometimes emerges. “PACK-zee”? Not even close.

Worst of all, however, is defaulting to “doughnuts.”

The recipe is similar to German, Jewish and Italian filled doughnuts, but traditional pączki contain a splash of Polish vodka called Spiritus, says Eater.com.

In Poland, pączki day fell on Feb. 16 in 2023, as it’s always the Thursday before Lent. It has been reported that 2.5 million of the doughy indulgence are eaten on average on Fat Thursday in the country.

And in New Orleans …

In New Orleans, Fat Tuesday is the final day of Carnival. And Mardi Gras serves up another favorite sweet tradition: the king cake.

Mardi Gras — also known as Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, and Pancake Day — is celebrated all over the world as a last day of revelry before the solemn season of Lent. Carnival season officially begins each year on Jan. 6, the 12th day after Christmas, known as King’s Day. It closes with the arrival of Lent on Ash Wednesday.

It is believed that the king cake originated in France and was brought to New Orleans in 1870. The French version of this delicacy is made of an almond-filled puff pastry that gives off a flaky texture. It also features a decorative pattern and is sometimes topped with a paper crown.

In New Orleans, you’ll usually find sweet, round, soft braids of cinnamon-swirled yeasted dough, topped with purple, green and gold sugar. Maybe a little icing, says Epicurious. 

Perhaps it’s most famous for that hidden baby charm.

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Manny Randazzo King Cakes, a bakery voted one of New Orleans’ top king-cake makers, says the tradition was brought to America from France in the 1870s. The idea of a baby inside was hatched much later.

In the 1940s, a baker named Donald Entringer solidified the baby-in-the-cake tradition when a traveling salesman approached him trying to offload small porcelain dolls. Entringer began baking the porcelain dolls into his king cakes to symbolize baby Jesus, and the tradition was born. When he ran out of the ceramic babies, he followed the lead of his fellow New Orleans bakeries and switched to plastic.

Today, you’re most likely to find a plastic baby in your cake, but, since tiny dolls weren’t always widely available, coins and beans have historically been substituted.

Now some would-be cake eaters may notice the baby left out of the bake, accompanying the cake merely as an accessory.

“As far as the barren king cakes are concerned — and I truly hate to say this as a multigenerational native New Orleanian — we have a grocery from Mobile, Alabama, to blame,” writes Megan Braden-Perry, for Epicurious.

In 1991, according to reports in the Times-Picayune, the Mobile-based Delchamps grocery, with several locations across the Gulf Coast, was the first to sell king cake without the baby baked inside. During this particularly litigious time, where even playground equipment was often found barricaded, the Delchamps team wanted zero liability for plastic-baby-related choking incidents while selling king cakes outside of the traditional king cake consumption area. 

So what does it mean to find the baby in your slice? (Ideally with your molars intact, and not, God willing, the next day!) Many believe a year of good luck will come your way; others say you’re on the hook for next year’s cake.

Others suggest it’s a sign of a bun in the oven — yep, the kind that has nothing to do with baking.

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