EvaDean’s joins the paczki fun to celebrate Fat Tuesday

Prepare your gut, but there’s a new paczki player in town.

EvaDean’s Bakery and Cafe has brought the Fat Tuesday pastry to Wilmette by the hundreds as the big day approaches on Tuesday, March 5.

In its inaugural year, 2024, Wilmette restaurant just missed out on Fat Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras, which celebrates indulgence just before Lent begins. Paczki is a Polish doughnut — often with a sweet filling, such as cream, custard or fruit — that has become synonymous with the occasion.

EvaDean’s co-owner and baker Jordana VanBergen is continuing her family’s paczki pedigree. VanBergen’s father, Jory Downer, owns Bennison’s Bakery, which is one of Chicagoland’s top paczki producers and even holds a paczki-eating competition each year.

EvaDean’s has many of Bennison’s recipes, but thanks to VanBergen, plenty of original flavors, as well. The bakery offers classics like strawberry cream and banana cream paczki, as well as VanBergen’s own black forest, cookies and cream, and caramel apple varieties.

EvaDean’s has limited availability for paczkis daily and is taking preorders for Fat Tuesday until Monday, March 4. VanBergen said there will also be a limited amount of paczki available on Tuesday, March 5, and she expects the shop to make about 600 or more — including a special pistachio rose paczki — on Tuesday. New Orleans-style King Cakes are also available.

While VanBergen grew up around baked goods, including paczki, she said the popularity of the delicacy, at least locally, has only recently surged.

“It seems like it got really, really big in the last 10 years,” she said. “We did it when I was growing up, but it’s really become what it is in the last 10 years, for at least the North Shore.”

So far at EvaDean’s, the strawberry cream (VanBergen’s favorite), black forest, and cookies and cream versions have been the most popular.

Bennison’s Bakery, 1000 Davis St., Evanston, produces thousands of paczki each year.

Bennison’s is accepting preorders through Monday, March 4, and will also have paczkis available for in-person purchase on Monday and Tuesday, March 4-5.

A few miles north, Deerfield Bakery is no paczki slouch, either, with 20 varieties of the pastry, ranging from classic raspberry and custard to banana cream and cookies and cream. You can order through the holiday.

If residents miss out on the big-bakery buy, local grocers The Grand Food Center in Winnetka and Glencoe and Mariano’s in Northfield both offer paczki in their bakeries.

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