Churros

Churros are one of my absolute FAVORITE desserts! When I found a recipe for them in my Cuisine at Home magazine I was beyond ecstatic! All the necessary items were immediately put on my shopping list and we went shopping :)

Unfortunately the only part that seemed to work out right was the shopping, haha. The recipe says to use a 1/2 inch wide star shaped piping tip, but the churros just seemed to come out waaay too small and the center wasn't doughy enough. About six churros in, the piping bag actually broke! I popped the piping tip in to the corner of a zip-lock bag, but it was only one churro later before the tip tore it's way out of that. The dough was just too thick to pipe out of a bag.

I decided to squeeze it out of the corner of the bag, but as I did, the corner just continued to tear bigger and bigger until the entire glob of dough popped out! At that point I simply started tearing dough off and rolling it with my hands. This was a very laughable situation because after frying, the churros looked more like turds than churros :O Fortunately after being covered with the sugar mixture they looked a little better ;)

Next time I'm going to try a "+" plate with my cookie press. If that doesn't work, I found a few churreras (basically a cookie press with a star shape at the end) for less than $20.

Vegetable Oil
1/2 cup + 2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 water
1/4 tsp salt
Minced zest of 1 orange
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs

• Heat about 2" of oil in a large pot until it registers 350 degrees on a candy thermometer.
• Combine 1/2 cup sugar, cinnamon, and cardmom in cereal bowl, set aside.
• Heat butter, water, 2 tsp sugar, salt, and zest in saute pan over medium until bowling. Stir in flour. Cook one minute more to dry out.
• Transfer dough to mixing bowl, mix for 30 seconds with hand mixer. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until incorporated.
• Transfer dough to a piping bag fitted with medium star shaped tip.
• Pipe 3" long strips of dough in to hot oil. Slice dough from piping tip with knife dipped in frying oil.
• Fry churros until golden brown on both sides, remove from fryer, and drain on paper-towel-lined plate. Immediately coat in sugar mixture.

Here are the... funny... looking ones ;)