An Attempt at Homemade Churro's

Well for Cinco de Mayo we had Pollo Asado, brown rice, a salad and I made Churro's.
Boy was this quite the adventure.

It was really simple to make the dough.

I used this recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 2 Tbs brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1 cup white flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup sugar

• 1/2 to 1 tsp. ground cinnamon, depending on taste

Preheat 1 1/2 to 2 inches of vegetable (I used canola) oil in a 10 to 12 inch frying pan to 375 degrees F. note to self: buy a candy thermometer otherwise you will have no idea what 375* of hot oil looks like. This will help you in the future. Also, buy a meat tenderizer. That is all

In a sauce pan ( I used a 1.5 qt one but it called for a 3 qt one, mine was in use for the rice for dinner) add the water, brown sugar, salt, and butter and heat to a good boil. Remove from the heat and add the flour. Stir until well blended.

In a separate bowl, mix the eggs and vanilla together and then add this to the pan with the flour mixture. Make sure that the egg gets all combined into the dough.

Put your dough in your decorator (think frosting decorator, if you don't have one you could always cut the tip of a plastic baggy off and squeeze from there, just be very careful) and attach a star tip.

Test your oil by placing a small amount of dough in it. The dough should bubble up right away or that means the oil is not hot enough, now if you were like me, yours bubbled and got dark right away which means your oil is too hot. Not hot enough oil = sogginess, Too hot oil = cooked on outside, NOT cooked on the inside.

Once the oil is hot enough, squeeze some dough (with decorator) into the oil about 4 inches long. Use your finger to release the dough from the decorator, just be careful because you are mighty close to the hot oil, you don't want your finger to get in on the frying action.

You should be able to cook 3- 5 churros at a time. Cook for 1-2 minutes on each side, turning once during the frying process.

Remove the churros with the slotted spoon and place them on a paper towel-covered plate.

I found it easiest while one batch was cooking to roll the last cooked batch in cinnamon and sugar. Then repeat.

So since apparently I let my oil get too hot and it doesn't cool down very quickly I had to do some fast thinking, so I put on a smaller tip from my decorator and used that, since they were thinner, they cooked faster and thus I didn't have a crispy outside and raw inside. Then once it got cool enough I switched back.

I told hubby the ones that were a different shape were American-ized Churro's since I am clearly not Mexican and this just proved it.

None-the-less they were still good! But very time consuming, all frying is I think!

Tomorrow look for a Buttermilk Pie recipe!

Have a great day and God Bless!