Churros

Every time I eat a churro, I'm transported back to when I was a kid at an amusement park convincing my parents to buy me a churro from the guy with the rolling cart. There was something so appealing about the long pastry batons, crispy with their cinnamon-sugar coating and yet they always seemed too big for my pint-sized self. Alas, I could always count on my brother to polish any remainders off.

Perhaps it's because they seemed so manufactured and perfectly straight, that I never really put any thought into actually making them. As I've mentioned before, I have a strong aversion to frying anything, so that's another reason I've always put off making them. But they really are quite simple. And no, I don't say that about everything I make.

Churros are essentially the Spanish take on a donut. However, Wikipedia offers a very interesting take on the origins of this tasty treat. Apparently the Portuguese came back from Asia (of course everything is stolen from the Asians, right?), and they modified a recipe for Chinese fried donuts, You Tiao or Youzagwei in Southern China. Of course the technique was lost in translation, and since the Portuguese didn't learn the art of pulling the dough, they ended up extruding it through a star tip. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, considering the consistency of both doughs aren't quite the same. Chinese donuts are a lot more airy and probably require some sort of leavening agent, whereas churros are fried pate a choux. In any case, the Chinese didn't figure out how tasty these things are with a mug of hot chocolate.

The recipe I used was from Allrecipes.com. There are a couple good recipes on the site, but I prefer the ones with egg in them. After mixing up the dough, I filled a pastry bag with a large star tip and shallow fried 4 inch pieces of dough at time. The trick is to have a scissor handy so you can cut the length of dough once piped out of the bag, directly into the oil. Once the churros are golden brown, quickly remove them and roll them in cinnamon sugar. The cinnamon sugar won't adhere as easily once the churros have cooled.

You can serve them with chocolate sauce, hot chocolate, or in my case, a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.