Miscriant: Churros

You know those evenings when you just crave something sweet and crispy and light and fluffy? Yeah, that.

Last night Steve and I were relaxing on the sofa after dinner, watching back to back episodes of Bones that we needed to catch up on when he suddenly sat bolt upright and declared very loudly "I want churros".

We hadn't actually made churros before but it is remarkably easy to do. Once I had finished turning the house upside down looking for my piping bag that is. One of the negatives about having a kitchen so small you can't really fit two people in it is that stuff is never where it is supposed to be - ie. cake making equipment is kept in the spare bedroom.

We used a Nigella recipe that she in turn had borrowed from Thomasina Miers for this and tweaked it depending on what we had in the house. We also made far too much. You could halve this and still feed 2 people. We didn't fry half of the dough.

250g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons olive oil
450ml boiling water
1 litre sunflower oil (for frying)
90 g caster sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (or nutmeg, or all spice, or anything that takes your fancy)
pinch sea salt

Stuff for dunking. Thomasina Miers has a great chocolate dip recipe but we had no chocolate in the house so I settled for chocolate spread. It didn't really work but it was messy and fun trying to smear the chocolate on the churros!

Once you have your ingredients assembled here comes the tricky bit.

Sift the flour and baking powder and salt together. Make a well in the flour Add the olive oil and boiling water to the flour. Mix together with a fork to make a soft dough. Leave it to rest for 10 minutes.

Hard isn't it!

While your dough is resting you may as well heat up your oil ready for frying.

Also assemble your other bits - ladle for hooking the churros out of the oil, kitchen paper for draining and mix your caster sugar and cinammon together in a bowl ready for tossing the cooked churros in. Also get your piping bag ready (I used a drop flower tip nozzle as it makes for nice crispy ridges in the churros) and your scissors for snipping. You don't want to be messing around once the frying has started.

When your dough has finished resting, test a small amount in the oil to check it is hot enough for frying. If it is, oil your hands and whack the dough into the pastry bag.

Hold over the oil, squeeze and snip. Simples!

We cooked about 20 per batch, and each batch took about 3 minutes then whisked them out safely to their kitchen paper to drain.

Once they had drained slightly, we tossed them in the caster sugar and cinammon mix. I then brushed most of it back off with a pastry brush as they were absolutely covered and I just wanted a subtle crunch, but this is up to you.