Churros

Holaaa!

Hope you are enjoying the weekend. The weather is so nice here in Maryland. I forgot what a sunny day was, after snow and more snow, rain then clouds… so yaay! looks like spring is coming!

Yesterday I was at the bakery and I smelled something that reminded me of churros. And of course my first thought was, I have to make them because I haven’t had one in years! I couldn’t believe it. Churros are really, really good. In Spain, it is very common to see food carts selling churros and they are called ” Churrerias”. You can smell them from a mile away. That smell is so unique.

We usually eat churros for breakfast, (I would say mostly Sunday morning). They are dipped in hot chocolate or with a latte. Or as I would say in Spanish, “café con leche”. A churro is basically deep fried dough, crunchy on the outside, and usually sprinkled with sugar. You can also find churros dipped in dark chocolate which are super yummy too!

This recipe, besides being very easy, is also very cheap. All you really need are water, flour and sugar, and a couple extra ingredients…

Ingredients:

2 cups water

¼ teaspoon sugar (for the dough)

Extra sugar to sprinkle after

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoons of butter

1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all purpose flour

2 cups vegetable or canola oil

Zest of one medium lemon, yellow part only, avoid white pith (use a vegetable peeler, not a zester, to allow easy removal of zest

Cook the water, salt, sugar and butter on medium heat in a pot. Stir for a few minutes and add the lemon skin of a lemon (we’ll remove it later) and the vanilla. Stir until it boils.

SONY DSC — Water, salt, sugar and butter

Once it starts boiling, remove the lemon skin and add the flour. Keep stirring! Don’t get distracted because you will have a big ball of dough very soon. I usually stir the dough with a wooden spoon, it works really well.

Once you have a big ball of dough, place it into your your piping bag (if you don’t have one, just use a Ziploc bag and cut the corner of the bag). On a sheet , pipe a 5 inch long straight line of dough (or any size you desire…)

Once the oil is hot (325F) place the churros carefully in the pan and cook until they get a nice golden brown color. Remove them from the pan and place on a plate lined with paper towels to remove the excess oil and then set aside.