You see what I mean? Anyway, Mardi Gras was earlier this month and as my family uses any excuse to party, we had a Cajun-themed dinner of gumbo followed by sweet, fluffy beignets. I had made beignets at work (I'm going to use my job to excuse myself from not having posted in I-don't-know-how-long since I work at a bakery and, come on, would you want to go to work and bake all day, then come home and bake some more? ...Who am I kidding? I do that anyway) and although they turned out really great once we oven-lovin' bakers learned our way around hot oil, I thought they needed something. So I made them at home and added cinnamon. That's a bingo!
I made a few changes to this recipe from Paula Dean which - amazingly - doesn't use butter! What were you thinking, Paula?
French Quarter Beignets
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water (around 100 degrees F- make sure the water isn't too hot or it will commit double homicide against the yeast and your final product)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 envelope active dry yeast
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 cup evaporated milk
7 cups bread flour
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup shortening
Nonstick spray
Oil, for deep-frying
3 cups confectioners' sugar
Directions
Mix water, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl and let sit for 10 minutes.
In another bowl, beat the eggs, salt and evaporated milk together. Mix egg mixture into the yeast mixture. In a separate bowl, measure out the bread flour. Add about 3 cups of the flour and the cinnamon to the yeast mixture and stir to combine. Add the shortening and continue to stir while adding the remaining flour. Remove dough from the bowl, place onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Spray a large bowl with nonstick spray. Put dough into the bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a towel and let rise in a warm place for at least 2 hours.
When about ready to cut and fry beignets, preheat oil in a deep-fryer to 350 degrees F.
Add the confectioners' sugar to a paper or plastic bag and set aside.
Roll the dough out to about 1/4-inch thickness and cut into 1 1/2-inch or bigger squares (the original recipe calls for 1 inch squares but I found that the smaller beignets were extremely uncooperative during the frying process and oftentimes refused to flip. Also, bigger squares mean bigger beignets!). Place about 10 beignets into the oil at a time, flipping constantly, until they become a golden color (if some of your beignets still won't flip, my dad and I found that gently stirring them with a big metal slotted spoon helped them to fry more evenly). Drain them on a paper towel and, every 5 or so batches, toss the beignets in the confectioners' sugar to coat. Or, you can wait until all the beignets are fried and then sift powdered sugar over them.
This recipe makes a TON so you should probably invite people over to help you eat them. Seriously, the first picture is only of half of the beignets. And the second picture is of this:
