Bonus Post #1: Churros con Chocolate

Churros. Churros, churros, churros. 

Who doesn't love the warm, crisp, and sugary treat? You can have them with cinnamon sugar, icing sugar, dark chocolate, white chocolate, or even hot chocolate. When I moved to Australia, my grandma took us to this churro shop at the shopping centre near us; it was owned by a Mexican family and they served the best churros I have ever had. Unfortunately, due to the shopping centre's remodelling the delightful little churro shop had to go and since then I've had to settle for deep-fried frozen churros from  Mad Mex (Mexican fast food chain). That is, until now. 

When my grandma returned from her trip to Spain six years ago, she brought home with her a churrera or churro maker, which is essentially a glorified piping bag. Wanting to try something different to what I normally do in the kitchen, I asked if I could borrow the churrera to make some homemade churros. I used this recipe from Chelsea's Messy Apron and it turned out really well! 

The Process

I had my grandma on sugaring duty, my boyfriend on piping/frying duty, and I was on chocolate sauce duty. I must say, we made a pretty great team! We had a bit of trouble at first with the oil used for deep frying being way too hot, which made the churros blister like crazy, but once the oil cooled down to a reasonable temperature we got cracking. 

We used quite a deep pot to deep fry, which meant that it was a bit difficult to make them in stick form and they ended up quite loopy and curvy. There was quite a lot left over (which we stored in the fridge overnight) and with those, we used a frying pan and we got the churros to be stick-like. 

The dipping sauce was made from cream, chocolate chips, and a tablespoon of maple syrup. I just heated all of the ingredients in a little saucepan over low heat until the chocolate chips melted. The sauce was still good after we stored it in the fridge overnight, and we just heated it in the microwave for about 20 seconds so it would be slightly warm. 

The Result

The churros we made were quite light in comparison to the ones I've had at the shops, but delicious nonetheless! I think I had incorporated a bit too much air into the mixture because I used an electric mixer when I added the 3 eggs to the dough as I wasn't confident the two would combine well. It turns out, I just had to put in a bit of elbow grease with the wooden spoon and mix mix mix. Other than that, the churros were a little chewy on the inside and crisp on the outside; just how they're supposed to be. 

The Verdict

We had so much fun making the churros and we made so many that we didn't even have dinner. As my boyfriend said, "This is more fun than going out for churros!" and I have to agree with him on that one.

Have you ever tried making churros?