Traditionally, in mid-November, my sister and I go over to my memère's to make fruit pies and tourtière. It is an entire day of production and then once again, our freezers are happy with goodies from memère's kitchen; tourtières, peach pie, apple pie, strawberry pie, strawberry-rubhard pie, blueberry pie, saskatoon pie and cherry pie. Then with the leftover pie pastry we make "pets à soeurs" or we also called them "des nombrils". It's basically just flaky pie crust rolled up with a gooey paste of
butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon.
These are prized possessions. So much so that my memère would duct tape the containers and write "do not eat before Christmas". Well, little did she know that duct tape was not a deterrent for my sister and I. And eaten them frozen was even better!
Sadly this year, our pie day did not happen. A lot went one this year and my memère was not feeling up to it. My sister and I still made a small batch of pies but no "pets à soeurs" were made. I thought all was lost until the day my mother-in-law ask me what is my favourite Christmas dainty!
Well you should have seen her face when I said "pets à soeur", then giving her the translation in English. As far as pastries go, these win for having the least appetizing-sounding English translation. Pet de Soeurs,
which literally mean "sister's, or nun's, farts,". She then asked me if I had a recipe. It is basically by taste, but then I searched the internet for a recipe to give her a direction to go to. Little did i know that "pets à soeur" are a legit dessert. These cinnamon roll-resembling pastries were originally created in Québec and in Franco Manitoba communities. Who would have guessed that there was such a story behind these pets à soeurs!
Now guess where I will be going after this..
Note: Pet de soeurs are also
also commonly found throughout France and at European bakeries, but are a
little different—deep-fried puffs kind of like beignets instead of
these rolls.
