Every year on November 11, the Krapfen season begins. At 11:11 am, the Viennese ring in the beginning of Fasching by dancing the quadrille outside St. Stephen's Cathedral as Aida hosts its annual Krapfen eating contest, won in 2019 by Ahmed El-Degwy, consumer of 25 Krapfen inside 11 minutes and 11 seconds. November 11 is also one of the busiest days of the year for the Favoriten-based bakers Groissböck, known for their wedding cakes and unbeatable Schlemmerkrapfen, fried fresh multiple times a day, filled with apricot jam or vanilla pudding, and finished with a liberal dusting of powdered sugar. At the beginning and end of Fasching, the lines at Groissböck's bakeries run out the door as people queue to collect boxes of Krapfen to take to their families or places of work to share with friends and loved ones.
Rudolf Groissböck founded his bakery in Meidling, Vienna's 12th district, in 1974, opening what is today their central location in the 10th district on Neilreichgasse two years later. For the past seven years, the business has been run by Rudolf's son, Oliver, and today the firm employs 80 people across four locations. Groissböck is distinguished not only by its cakes but also its coffee, which they roast themselves, and the neighbourhoody feel of their locations. The upscale lifestyle magazine Falstaff said of the Schlemmerkrapfen in February 2020 that they are "slightly misshapen with a wrinkled band around the middle," they have a "fresh aroma reminiscent of bread rolls" and a "compact texture [and] intense dough flavour," and the filling is intensely rum-flavoured. A mixed review, perhaps, though for my money, Groissböck's Schlemmerkrapfen is the apricot Krapfen to beat.
