Berliner
Also known as: Cream-filled Berliner · Portuguese doughnut
The golden ball that roams Portugal's beaches to the cry of 'olha a bolinha!'.
- Origin
- 1940s · brought from Germany by wartime refugees
- Region
- Nationwide
- Season
- Year-round (especially summer)
The bola de Berlim is a ball of soft, yeasted dough, deep-fried, rolled in sugar while still warm and split down the middle to take a generous filling of bright-yellow egg custard. There is no hole: it is round, plump and golden all the way through.
Despite the German name, the Portuguese version long ago parted ways with its Berlin cousin. Where the German one carries fruit jam, ours carries a yolk-rich egg custard — sweeter, richer, unmistakably Portuguese.
Above all, it is the sweet of summer. You will find it in every café, but its true kingdom is the beach, where vendors carry it in cool-boxes and hawk it from towel to towel.
- flour
- baker's yeast
- eggs
- milk
- butter
- sugar
- frying oil
- egg custard
A thin, lightly crisp fried crust, a soft, springy crumb, and a centre of silky, very sweet egg custard. The granulated sugar outside meets the vanilla and lemon of the cream within. Warm, it is heavenly; straight from the fridge, it loses its charm.
The egg custard is the benchmark, but versions abound: unfilled (German-style, just sugared), with whipped cream, doce de ovos, chocolate, dulce de leche and, more recently, hazelnut, Kinder or red-berry fillings. There is also a baked bola de Berlim, lighter, for those who shun frying.
At a good neighbourhood pastelaria, always fresh and brimming with cream. In Lisbon, Sacolinha — born in Cascais — is a classic reference. But the most Portuguese way to eat one is on the beach, bought from a cool-box to the cry of 'olha a bolinha!', with your feet in the sand.
On the beach, all you need is the sun and the thirst it stirs up. In a café, a galão or a bica to cut the sweetness.
The bola de Berlim descends from the German Berliner Pfannkuchen, the yeasted, fried, jam-filled bun that Germans eat above all at New Year and during Carnival. It reached Portugal with the Jewish and German refugees who took shelter here around the Second World War, in a neutral country that served as a way-station for thousands in flight — among them, the story goes, Ruth Davidsohn of Hamburg, credited by tradition with spreading it.
The jam filling, however, never quite won over Portuguese taste. Bakeries soon swapped it for the yellow egg custard the Portuguese so love, fixing the version now regarded as national — so deeply woven in that many forget its foreign origin entirely.
Sources: poligrafo.sapo.pt · pt.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · devourtours.com · sacolinha.pt