For many local bakeries, it is also one of the busiest, as pastry cases are filled with traditional paczki, giving customers one last chance to “splurge” before the Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday.

At MarketPlace Foods in Iron Mountain, paczki production began early Monday morning and will continue straight through today to meet demand.

Store Director Matt VandenAvond said the bakery will run for about 30 hours nonstop, making about 9,000 paczki.

In addition, the store filled an early order of 2,000 paczki on Monday.

MarketPlace Foods Assistant Manager Laurie Bates fills paczki with lemon custard. The store offers eight different fillings with three coating options, granulated sugar, powdered sugar or glazed. (Terri Castelaz/Daily News)

VandenAvond said a 12-person crew will be on today to accommodate customers. “It gets very busy, especially in the morning,” he said.

All paczki are made from scratch in the store. “Each individual one is hand-rolled, cut, fried, filled and frosted here,” VandenAvond said.

The bakery offers eight different fruit and custard fillings with three coating options — granulated sugar, powdered sugar or glazed.

“Raspberry, Bavarian (cream) and blueberry are probably the most popular flavors,” he said.

MarketPlace Foods will continue to take special orders this morning, and customers can purchase individual paczki from the display case until 5 p.m., when the bakery closes.

The rich, indulgent pastries — pronounced poonch-key — originated in Poland centuries ago as a way to use up ingredients such as sugar, eggs, butter and lard before the fasting season of Lent began.

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Terri Castelaz can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 85241, or tcastelaz@ironmountaindailynews.com.