Velvet Bakery Offers Paczki At 2024 Prices, Despite High Cost of Eggs

OAK LAWN, IL — Oak Lawn’s unofficial “Queen of Paczki” – Anna Kaliszak, owner of the Velvet Bakery, was in the heat of frying and stuffing dough in anticipation of the bakery’s busiest day of the year – Fat Tuesday – which this year falls on March 4.

Anna has enlisted her family and friends into a paczki (pronounced “ponchkey”) assembly line. She expects to crank out 35,000 of the decadent treats.

“We’ll be frying dough and stuffing, frying dough and stuffing all night,” the bakery owner told Patch.

The paczki tradition goes back to the Middle Ages, when Poles made paczki to use up all the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit in the house before fasting during the Lenten season. "Paczki Day" has since been embraced and celebrated in the heavily Polish-American Midwest on "Fat Tuesday," the last big blowout before Ash Wednesday.

Since she opened in 2010, the Velvet Bakery, 5168 W. 95th St. (95th Street and 52nd Avenue), has been Oak Lawn’s go-to spot for their Fat Tuesday paczki fix. This year, Anna expects to go through 350 cartons of eggs (15 eggs per carton) two tons of flour, and 200 pounds of yeast. Despite the high cost of eggs – a carton of 15 runs around $65 – Anna says she is keeping the prices of paczki the same as last year.

“The cost of eggs is crazy,” Anna said. “Maybe we won’t make money, but people will be happy following a tradition. Everything is expensive now.”

The secret to good paczki is the dough, with just a squirt of “middle,” otherwise it's just a doughnut. The Velvet Bakery is offering 14 flavors of middle, including raspberry, blueberry, plum, custard, apple, pineapple, strawberry, apricot, rose, lemon, cherry and cream cheese. New this year is pistachio.

For fancier paczki, there is strawberry and blueberry with whipped cream. Singles will run you $2.99.

Anna has been making paczki since she was 8 years old growing up in Poland, where she helped her mom in the kitchen. Only a few people besides Anna know the Velvet Cake Bakery’s top-secret paczki recipe, including her mother-in-law, Regina, mistress of the deep fryer, her own mother and her husband.

The Velvet Bakery, 5168 W. 95th St., Oak Lawn (95th Street and 52nd Avenue), offers 14 different flavors of paczki. Singles are $1.99 each, a 4-pack is $7.96, a half-dozen is $11.94, or pick up a dozen for $23.88. The Velvet Bakery also makes wedding, communion, birthday and cakes for all occasions, cookies and other Polish desserts year-round. The bakery will be open from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 4, or until the paczki runs out.