Snow Day!

When Uncle George gives me the day off because the city gets a foot of snow, how do I celebrate? With a plate of something fried of course! Now that a fry daddy calls my appliance cabinet home, I've been trying to make him feel useful. So, I figured it was time Mr fry daddy tried his hand at one of my favorite genres of fried foods...donuts. It should come as no surprise to you that as a kid growing up in a waspy suburban New England town, I did not eat a ton of Mexican food. With that in mind, you'll excuse the fact that my introduction to the churro was in Disney World's frontier land. After my sisters and I had our first churro, having one became as much a mission of each Disney trip as riding Thunder Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean as many times as our parents could endure.

When I read some churro recipes, I was surprised to find how much they had in common with pate a choux dough (you know that dough that's responsible for cream puffs and profiteroles). Why such shock? Because pate a choux is a pretty eggy dough and I've always thought of churros as a rich dough but it never occurred to me that eggs were the culprit. It was with great trepidation that I began making this dough, because I'm very picky about eggy tasting things (chief among them being souffles and omelets).

I predominantly used this recipe from food network's website. I did add a good dash of cinnamon and nutmeg to the dough with the flour to add a bit of flavor to the dough. While I made the dough, I heated canola oil in the fry daddy. By the time the dough was ready, the oil was up to 360 and ready to fry. For the dough, you melt butter and water in a pot over high heat and then stir in flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg over a low flame until the dough dries out a bit and forms a ball. I let the dough cool for a few minutes, because my eggs were straight from the fridge and I wanted to eat churros not scrambled eggs.

Dough ball after flour addition

I stirred in the 3 eggs until they were fully incorporated and then I used a large star tip in a pastry bag to pipe the dough into the hot oil. My churros didn't come out in nice long strips like tradition churros, but I kind of liked the odd shapes (see picture below!). The recipe says about 2 minutes frying per side, but I found that mine took closer to 3 minutes a side. As soon as they were done frying I drained them on paper towels, pipped new churros into the oil, and by that time the first batch was cool enough to toss in the cinnamon sugar.

The end result was good (I would say 3 stars out of 5), but sadly not the oddly amazing churros from Disney and no where close to the homemade churros sold in the NYC subway. As I was afraid of, they were a little more eggy then I would have liked, but the texture was spot on. These were so easy to make though that I'm going to keep at it until I recreate the perfect churro! I'd be lying if I didn't admit that before my next batch of churros I'm going to try something more appropriate for a French Canadian to master...beignets!

I Heart Churros

Let it Snow!