For her customers at Cooking by the Book, Suzi knows that the dessert has to be the perfect cap for the evening’s meal. Teams come into her kitchen, cook together, and then dine on their creations. That final dish, dessert, has to fabulous.
When you have 20 or 30 people in your kitchen, you can create quite a mess indeed. And the last thing you want to do is have fried food. It’s just too much: the mess, the cleaning, the lingering smells.
Traditionally, churros are fried. Suzi and her team have developed this recipe for baked churros. They are delicious, probably healthier, and much easier in terms of clean up. The picture here shows the churros served with a dark chocolate ganache dotted with whipped cream. The recipe for the churros is below, but I’ll let you search for the ganache of your choice. Suzi offers dark chocolate, but I’m a big milk chocolate fan.
Baked Churros with Dark Chocolate Ganache
Yield: serves 6
Ingredients:
- 1 cup water
- 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ⅓ cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup AP flour
- 3-4 large eggs (for a thick but pipe able dough)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (or to taste)
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 400F for 20 minutes. Cover two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.
In a medium saucepan, stir together the 1 cup of water, brown sugar and salt. Add the butter, turn the heat to medium-high, and stir until the butter first melts and then the mixture begins to boil.
Add the flour, stirring constantly. It is best to use a wooden spoon for this stage. The mixture will eventually clump and pull away from the sides of the pan. Mash with the wooden spoon until no streaks of flour can be seen. Cook over heat for 1 minute, allowing some water to evaporate.
One at a time, stir in the eggs one at a time, fully incorporating each time before adding the next. You will be stirring and mashing, breaking up the dough each time. Add the vanilla and give a final stir.
Transfer dough to a piping bag with ¾-inch tip (French star #7). Pipe dough into long thin length on the parchment covered baking sheets. Leave about 2-inches of space between the churros. Bake until medium brown, 15-20 minutes.
Combine sugar and cinnamon and pour onto a long dish. Roll churros in the mixture and serve with ganache on the side for dipping.
Source: Staff at Cooking by the Book, New York City