One hundred and fifty five years ago on November 4, the brigantine arrived in Bermuda carrying the first boatload of Portuguese from the island of Madeira.

Since that time, the Portuguese have left their mark on Bermudian culture in many ways, one of the most delicious being malassadas or Portuguese doughnuts.

Buy a bag of them at just about any school fair in Bermuda and suddenly everyone's your best friend, until the source runs out.

Wouldn't it be great to make these little cakes of joy at home? Whether they are easy to make depends on who you ask.

One unnamed source told a story of malassadas woe to .

"I tried that once," she said, "when I was first married. I've never lived it down. You could bounce the doughnuts off the wall, they were so hard. Now, every now and again my husband's family, who are Portuguese, will say with a wink, 'So, when are you going to make some more malassadas?'"

She added jokingly: "Warning, do not try this without a Portuguese at home."

This week reporter Jessie Moniz met with Beatrice Faries to learn exactly how to make malassadas. Mrs. Faries was well-known in Bermuda for selling Tupperware, and has been making malassadas for her family, school fairs and charities for many years. Mrs. Faries has kindly agreed to give readers her recipe. She said: "If you still can't figure it out, give me a call."

Mrs. Faries' parents were from the Azores.

"I was the first child born in Bermuda," she said. "My father and mother arrived in Bermuda on May 24, 1927. My sister was ten months old when they arrived. The ship docked in Grassy Bay, someone went up to pick them up in a launch and brought them to shore. They went to work for Joseph Faries in Paget. In coincidence, my husband came to work for the brother of Joseph. They were like a very distant relation. My husband came to work for Dunkley's Dairy."

Mrs. Faries and her husband were married in 1946, and like our unnamed source, had a few marital malassadas issues to work out.

"My mother made the batter soft," said Mrs. Faries. "When I got married my husband said that isn't how you do it. He took me to my Godmother, and she showed me how to do it a different way. All it was was making the batter harder. My mother's tasted pretty good too. They would come out with different shapes. That was the way her family use to make it. Like Bermuda, the Azores is divided up into parishes. Each parish has its own feast days, its own style and habits."

Mrs. Faries begins the process by making the dough.

"To make it quickly, I put three packets of yeast," she said. "If you had more time and were doing it over night you would put less yeast. You let the dough rise. It is just like bread only it is soft. If the weather is cool it may need more time to rise."

After the dough, comes the frying. Mrs. Faries always begins this part by first placing newspaper on the floor around the stove to catch oil splatters from the frying pan. She started doing this a couple of years ago, after she slipped on some of the oil on the floor and hurt herself.

"You have to put a deep skillet with enough oil so the doughnuts don't reach the bottom of the pan," she said.

Mrs. Faries recommended that you keep a little bowl nearby with oil to wet your fingers.

"Then, you break a little piece of dough, you spread it out to as big a size as you wish, punch a hole in the middle. You don't have to put a hole in, but I usually do it. When you make a big batch it takes hours."

Malassadas translates roughly, into 'poorly cooked'. The skillet is just for browning the doughnuts.

"If you raise the heat, it cooks faster," said Mrs. Faries. "Usually, I have the heat halfway up, and it cooks faster."

The small batch that Mrs. Faries was making took "only" nine cups of flour, but a normal size batch would take five pounds of flour. This is not a recipe for the faint of heart.

Mrs. Faries usually makes the recipes with her sister-in-law Maria Trindade DeFrias. "It is easier if you have at least two people," Mrs. Faries said. "If you have only one person it is much harder. If it was just me, I would have to do the turning, and putting it in the pan. There is a lot of preparation. You put the paper on the floor, and the pans are all lined with paper."

She said you also have to be prepared to move quickly, because the dough can cook in the skillet, faster than you can rip new pieces off.

After the frying pan, the doughnuts go into lined pans to cool. Mrs. Faries has created her own technique for getting the sugar quickly onto the doughnuts.

"You put some sugar in a clean, brown-paper grocery bag," she said. "You put some of your doughnuts in the bag. Close up the bag and then shake. Open and check inside to make sure the sugar is on the doughnuts."

After this step, take them out of the bag and enjoy.

"Now they are all sugared," she said. "They are delicious with coffee. When they are cold, take them and stick them in the microwave for ten seconds. They get warmed up and you can have them again. If you put them in the freezer without the sugar they will last for months."

When asked how many calories and cholesterol are in malassadas, Mrs. Faries laughed and said: "Don't even bother to go there. You don't get malassadas and count calories."

She said that malassadas are traditionally made in the spring for Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday is a time of celebration and also penitence, as it is the last day before Lent. It is a last chance to indulge, and to use up the foods that aren't allowed in Lent such as fat, butter and eggs ? all things found in great quantities in malassadas.

"Every Shrove Tuesday I always make them," Mrs. Faries said. "I make ten pounds of flour and then I end up going around and giving it to my relatives and friends. I call my nieces and send it to them. Everybody loves them."

Because of the health implications, and also because of the amount of labour they take, the only time Mrs. Faries makes them, other than for Shrove Tuesday, is for charity bake sales.

"When we have bake sales and things like that we do ten pounds of flour just the two of us," she said. "It makes a lot of money for charities. One day, after I'd finished bagging the doughnuts, I worked it out, and it turned out that we made $100 per batch, because the doughnuts usually sell for a dollar a piece."

Mrs. Faries said malassadas are popular everywhere there is a Portuguese community.

"I know they make these in other places, because on the RTP channel (the Portuguese channel), they have segments about the Portuguese in the United States and Canada. They were saying how at the or feast days they sell hundreds of pounds of malassadas."

Mrs. Faries loves to give her delicious creations to her relatives, particularly her grandchildren.

"They all love it," she said. "As soon as I make it, I call each one and everyone comes and with their little bag. I give all of them a little bag with six in it. I take it to work. Everybody loves them. It is nice to have a treat."