Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Boil the liquidsYou combine the water and butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat and bring the mixture to a rolling boil. You watch the pot during this step, because stepping away for too long lets excess water evaporate and leaves the finished dough too dry to pipe smoothly.
- Add the flourYou dump the flour into the boiling liquid all at once and stir aggressively with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms a smooth ball that pulls cleanly away from the sides of the pan. This is essentially a classic choux pastry base, and background on how choux pastry develops its structure through this exact cooking method appears at the Wikipedia article on choux pastry. The dough looks like a strange, lumpy mass for the first thirty seconds of stirring, which is completely normal and resolves as the flour hydrates fully.
- Cool and add the eggsYou remove the pot from the heat and let the dough cool for a full ten minutes before beating in the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs to a still-steaming dough cooks them on contact and produces scrambled egg churros, which nobody wants on their plate.
- Prep the piping bagYou transfer the cooled, glossy dough into a piping bag fitted with a large star tip. A round tip substitutes if that is all you have, though the finished churros will lack the traditional ridges that hold onto the sugar coating so effectively.
- Make the sugar coatingYou whisk the granulated sugar and ground cinnamon together in a shallow bowl. The shallow shape makes rolling the hot, freshly fried churros through the mixture significantly easier than a deep, narrow bowl would.
- Heat the oilYou fill a heavy pot with at least two inches of oil and heat it to exactly 350°F, keeping the thermometer clipped to the side of the pot throughout the frying process to monitor the temperature continuously.
- Fry the churrosYou squeeze three-inch strips of dough directly into the hot oil, snipping the ends cleanly with kitchen scissors as each piece falls. You fry for four to five minutes until golden brown, turning each piece once partway through. You keep the scissors away from the edge of the pot to avoid dropping them into the oil.
- Coat and serveYou roll the churros through the cinnamon sugar coating while they are still hot from the oil, working quickly since the sugar refuses to stick once the surface cools and the residual oil dries up. You serve them immediately alongside the warm coffee chocolate sauce.