Baked Flancati
My grandma used to make us a sweet, beignet-like treat we called by their American name: Angel Wings. Slovenians call them flancati (flan-tsa-tee) or sometimes pohanje. She twisted strips of dough into fanciful knots and shapes and plunged them into a simmering pot of oil. (Back then, it might have been Crisco, perish the thought!) They emerged brown and crispy, ready to be mounded on a plate, buried in a snowstorm of powdered sugar, and inhaled by a tribe of hungry grandchildren. I don't do deep-frying. So I figured angel wings would remain a distant childhood memory. Then I spotted a recipe for baked flancati. I figured it couldn't possibly be legitimate. But it turns out the recipe came from More Pots and Pans, another cookbook put out by the Slovenian Women's Union of America. So I figured it was worth a try. The recipe, I realized, was simply a variant of the rich pastry dough, made with either sour cream or cream cheese, that i...