Cube the dried fruit and mix with nuts, almonds, and cinnamon.
Marinate with slivovitz and rum to taste.
Let soak overnight.
On the next day, mix flour, confectioner’s sugar, and yeast mixed with lukewarm milk into the fruit.
Form two long bricks.
Preheat oven to 320 °F (160 °C).
For the dough, warm a bit of milk and dissolve the yeast in it.
Mix and then warm the egg yolk, milk, confectioner’s sugar, vanilla sugar, salt, and lemon zest.
Knead the two mixtures together with flour and half melted butter to form dough.
Chill.
Roll out the dough on a floured work surface, divide in half, and work in the fruit mixture.
Brush with beaten egg and yolk, let dry, and brush again.
Top with almonds, pistachios, and maraschino cherry halves and bake for about 50 minutes, depending on the size
Notes & Wine Advice
Pretty as a Doughnut
By the time of Maria Theresa, specialty doughnuts and crullers were already the dernier cri of well-to-do bourgeois and aristocrats. In the inn “Zur Goldenen Anten” on Schulerstrafe, a Viennese Fasching doughnut sweetened with “real cane sugar” cost five kreutzer. At the time, a Viennese carpenter earned twenty-four kreutzer in a day. The focal points of sweets in Vienna were the “Kunigund” on Braunerstrafe and the “Doughnut Girl” on the Kohlmarkt, who was allegedly “as pretty as a doughnut.” The reputation of the doughnut bakers was really not the best in the time of Maria Theresa’s Chastity Commission, because many of the “sweethole-in-the-walls” or “mandoletti,” as the bakeries were called, also rented back rooms for gallant adventures. The legend of the invention of the Fasching doughnut in its modern form goes back to the Viennese mandoletti baker named Cacilie Krapf, called Frau Cilly. However, a similar fried pastry has been known since Carolingian times.