Homemade Churros - EPIC FAILURE

Have you seen those emails going around that are called "FAIL" or "EPIC FAILURE" and they contain pictures of people attempting things or doing things that just didn't work out exactly the way they had planned? But yet someone takes pictures, compiles them into an email and it gets passed around the web for ll to laugh at anyways? Good times.

Well to me that was making homemade churros. I am, like I have said before, an amateur baker at best. No formal training. Just learn as I go from watching cooking shows on TV ( before we *gasp* got rid of our TV service - I know so un-American right?) or by learning from reading recipes and readers comments on the internet. Youtube is also great for watching videos to learn cooking and baking techniques. So a friend of mine ( the bad influence she is! ha ha ha) had me going on churros the other day. So I looked up online "homemade churro recipes" low and behold there are a TON of recipes, all pretty much the same. Pretty much. Some with slightly different ingredients, some with slightly different techniques but basically the deep fried Spanish doughnut stick thing covered in cinnamon sugary goodness that if you are like me, first had at Disneyland of all places, when you were a little kid. Now you can get them at Jack in the Box, local fairs and carnivals when they come to town, I even saw a churro vendor at an Oktoberfest I was at once. Not sure wht churros have to do with a German beer drinking festival but hey deep fried foods do go hand in hand with beer right?

 So I thought I could make these. I had relatively good success with my homemade doughnuts, that I would try churros. I found several recipes from looking at Tastepotting.com, a virtual community driven potluck of amazing pictures of all kinds of foods imaginable that lead to blogs, websites and RECIPES! I found two, since whenever I make anything new I always find two recipes to try and compare them as I go along. Or if one so happens to FAIL I have a backup. Maybe

So I started off by getting my cinnamon sugar ready in a pan, the best part of the churro in my opinion

Got all my ingredients out and ready next to my stove since this is a cooked batter and then deep fried

Got my hot oil ready to go. Why two thermometers? I bought a new one because my old one wasn't working right when I made a batch of Italian meringue buttercream, so I wanted to do a side by side comparison to see if they held the same temps. Nope, they sure didn't so new one stays, old one goes bye bye

Melting the water, butter, brown sugar and vanilla

Adding in the flour, take off the heat to mix and then add the egg

Um WTF? Its soupy not THICK like a batter. Throw away. Start over. Try again. ( I probably should have just stopped here but no I was DETERMINED to make these)

I was thinking about the process and since this was a batter to be piped out into the hot oil the soupy mess wasn't going to work so this had to me made like cream puff dough, so BOIL the butter mixture first

Then add the flour and turn heat to low DON'T take it off the heat

Nice THICK batter, off the heat add the egg mix well and then 

scoop into pastry bag

fitted with a big fat open star tip to get that classic churro look

squeezing out the batter into the hot oil, about a 5-6" piece at a time. And yes since my husband and I are relatively immature we were laughing saying it looked like POO being squeezed into the oil

UM huh. Where are they? There are three in there supposedly frying 2 min a side. So when they stay completely submerged does that mean 4 min total so like its 2 min a side? We went with 5 min and then took them out...

Again laughing saying they looked like poop or as my friends like to spell it, pewp. ha ha

rolling rolling rolling trying to mask the poop look to the churro look of cinnamony sugary goodness

Not bad...not good either...

Took a bite. Spit out out. DIS-GUS-TING. Barely fried, TOTALLY RAW in the middle

The next batch we let stay in til after like 10 min they FINALLY floated to the surface like fried things do when they are done, right? wrong

They smelled burnt and were ALL still raw in the middle. I quit

Good thing I had some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies leftover from when I made them the other day as a back up for a little something sweet to eat and to get the nasty burnt raw dough taste out of my mouth. I did spit out the one bite I had. YUCK

So I told my husband I am NEVER ever deep frying anything ever again and if I am to come across a recipe that requires deep frying to keep me from doing it OR better yet - do what I do BEST and make it into a cupcake. So with that in mind I researched CHURRO Cupcakes. And that is what I made and will be posting about soon. They were a great success. So I wont be posting anything deep fried ever again. But here are the recipes I used in case any of you are willing to try and if you do I wish you all the success in the world and hope you have better luck than I did!!

Churros with Cinnamon Sugar
(adapted from Deeba of Passionate About Baking)

1 cup milk
3 tbsp. butter, diced
2 tbsp. brown sugar
Pinch of salt
1 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon, plus more for dusting
2 large eggs
Vegetable oil, for frying
Cinnamon sugar, for dusting

In a medium bowl, mix the flour and cinnamon, set aside. In a mediam pot, heat the milk, butter, brown sugar, and salt over medium heat until the butter has melted. The mixture should be hot, but not boiling before adding the flour mixture. Add in the flour mixture into the pot. Remove the pot from the heat. Stir rapidly until the mixture pulls away from the side of the pan. Let cool slightly about 3-4 mins. Beat in the eggs, one at a time until the mixture is thick and smooth. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a wide star tip.

Heat the oil in a deep frying pan around 1.5-2 inch high. Pipe 5" lengths of the dough into the oil. Use a knife to cut the dough from the tip of the pastry bag. Deep fry for 4-5 mins; keep rotating the churros, until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Coat the churros with the cinnamon sugar.

CHURROS
Recipe from Gloria Chadwick's latest book Food and Flavours of San Antonio
.
Churros are often referred to as Spanish doughnuts.
1 cup water
3 tbsp. butter, diced
2 tbsp. brown sugar
Pinch of salt
1 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon, plus more for dusting
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 medium eggs
Vegetable oil, for frying
Confectioners’ or superfine sugar, for dusting

-Heat the water, butter, brown sugar, and salt in a saucepan over medium heat until the butter has melted.
-Add the flour all at once, cinnamon, and vanilla extract. Remove the pan from the heat and beat rapidly until the mixture pulls away from the side of the pan.
-Let cool slightly, then beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, until the mixture is thick and smooth. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a wide star tip.
-Heat the oil in a deep frying pan. Pipe 5" lengths of the dough into the oil. Deep fry for 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.
-Dust the churros with confectioners’ sugar and a light topping of cinnamon.
-Serves 12