Churros and Chocolate Sauce

 

You may have seen Churros at your local foodie market. Certainly if you’ve ever been to Spain, you’ll have seen this amazing doughnut like fingers, which can be either sweet or savoury. When I’ve seen them in the UK, they’re coated in sugar and cinnamon and are amazing dipped in a warm dark chocolate sauce.

The churro is actually a whole lot simpler to make than the classic doughnut – there’s no yeast, so no proving if required, and the whole dish can be made in about an hour. This makes it a brilliant dish to whip up before you cuddle up on the sofa, or to make for your family after a busy day.

My chocolate sauce is very simple and uses cocoa powder as a base ingredient. I use this simply because quite often I don’t have chocolate in the house (I’ll admit…it’s because I’ll have eaten it all). In fact, the recipe only uses store cupboard ingredients!

My churros are a little squat compared to those seen made my professionals, but I think they taste just as good!

Makes around 24 churros

Ingredients:

For the churros:

• 350ml boiling water
• 25g butter, melted
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 125g plain flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• Non-flavoured oil (such as sunflower), to half fill a saucepan

For the cinnamon sugar:

• 2 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 100g granulated sugar

For the chocolate sauce:

• 50g cocoa powder
• 15g butter
• 30g granulated or caster sugar
• 50ml milk

Method:

1. Measure out the boiling water into a jug, and whisk in the melted butter, and vanilla extract.

2. Pour the plain flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl, and briefly stir. Make a well in the middle of the bowl, and pour in the water/butter/vanilla mixture.

3. Beat the dough with a wooden spoon until smooth (this will only take a minute or so). Rest the dough for 15 minutes.

4. Make the chocolate sauce. Add the butter, sugar, cocoa and milk to a saucepan, and heat on a low heat. Stir continuously until the butter has melted, and the sauce is smooth.

5. Taste the sauce. If it is too bitter for your liking, add a little more sugar (or a touch of honey). If too sweet, add more cocoa. Heat the sauce until it has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon, and then set aside. Warm up before serving.

6. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. The oil needs to get VERY hot, about 190C.

7. Place the dough in a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle. I used a Wilton M1 nozzle, but you could use a smaller star nozzle if you want, or be creative and use a completely different nozzle entirely (if at all).

8. Holding the churro dough mixture vertically above the pan, pipe around 5-10cm of dough into the oil, then cut the churro from the rest of the dough using scissors. I found that if I piped too much dough the churro ended up bending – if anyone has tips about that, I’d love to hear them!

9. The oil will bubble up a lot, so be very careful. Cook the churros for around a minute (they will rise to the top of the oil), then carefully turn over and cook for another 30 seconds to a minute, until the churros are a light brown all over. Take out of the oil and place on kitchen towel to drain.

10. Repeat with the remaining dough. I found I could get around 5-6 churros in the pan at once.

11. Make the cinnamon sugar by mixing the cinnamon and granulated sugar in a large bowl.

12. Toss the warm churros in the cinnamon sugar.

13. Serve immediately with the warmed chocolate sauce (for dunking).

14. Enjoy!