Homemade Churros

My husband's family is Italian and he grew up eating fried dough. Bread dough fried and then sprinkled with powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar or served plain to eat with a meal. I'm from the Midwest and grew up eating portions of canned biscuits dropped into oil and then rolled in cinnamon sugar. We only had them on fondue night though. Who wants to waste a large vat of oil? The Princess loves both of our versions. However, after eating these churros, I think she's found her favorite.

I will be honest. I had to make the churros twice. The first time I made them I made the dough the day before and refrigerated. I set the dough out to come to room temperature while the oil was heating, but the oil reached 350 degrees and the dough wasn't ready, but I went ahead and started making them anyway.

BIG mistake.

The dough was so thick that when I tried to pipe through the star tip, it pushed the tip through my bag and created a large hole. I figured the only problem would be that they ended up thicker, but still good.

Wrong-O.

They were so thick that the outside got crispy and brown and the inside was completely raw dough. Gooey sticky raw. My husband ate some and said they were tasty. I was gagging, but since there were no eggs in the dough, I didn't stop him. Gross doesn't always equal food poisoning...I have to pick my battles. Of course I couldn't let it go. I had to start all over and fix my mistakes.

Thankfully, the recipe is very simple and starts with an easy cooked dough.

Dough
1 cup water
2 1/2 Tbsp white sugar
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup flour

Topping1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 tsp cinnamon

Combine water, sugar, salt, and oil in saucepan and bring to a boil. Once boiling, remove from heat and add the flour. Stir until mixture forms a ball.

Add dough to a piping bag or large ziplock bag fit with a star tip (I used Wilton 1M). Pipe dough into oil several strips at a time. Mine were about 3-4 inches long.

Fry until golden brown. I fried mine for about a minute and then turned them over and fried another minute. Once done, drain on paper towels and then roll in sugar mix.

The Princess called them crunchy sweet fries. I would describe them as a mix between a Taco Bell cinnamon stick thing and hot fried dough.

Nothing bad about that.  Definitely try these!

For full recipe go here

* If you don't have a star tip, these will still be fine. You could use a round tip or just cut a hole in the corner of a ziplock bag. These were roughly the diameter of a sharpie. I wouldn't go any larger than that.

* While piping the second batch into the oil I noticed another difference from the first batch. The second batch floated...the first batch sank. It was pretty clear that I should have sat the dough out much earlier to warm to room temperature. However, in the future I won't mess with making it the day before. The dough is so simple to make, it really doesn't save much time.

Bryn