Episode 67 – Beignets

Episode 67
September 18, 2011
Beignets

Have you ever had a recipe just staring at you for months?  You know, just watching you make all these other recipes even though you had clipped it long before you even knew those recipes existed?  Yeah, that’s pretty much how I treated this recipe before today.  I actually found this recipe in the Rachael Ray magazine.  I’ve always wanted to try to make beignets – I’ve eaten a few here and there – but for some reason I always thought they would be difficult.  Turns out they are a lot easier to make than I thought!  In fact, these are so easy they are a great party item – make them a little smaller and you’ve got yourself a bite sized piece of happy!

If you’ve been following me for a while now you may have noticed how much inspiration and recipes I get from Rachael Ray’s magazine.  To be honest, I’m a little surprised myself.  I’ve never been much of a magazine collector but while I was working at the grocery store my team leader got me hooked on her magazine.  I’ve always kind of liked Rachael Ray because she’s practical in how she cooks.  Most of us nowadays don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to cooking – we’ve got so much we want to do and when we get home the last thing we want to do is eat up all our relaxing time with cooking and cleaning dishes.  What’s great is that she makes a lot of her meals from scratch and within 30 minutes and I get a lot of great ideas and tips from how she does so – plus she has a lot of tasty recipes in her magazine that are easy to make and usually can be made with ingredients I usually already have in my fridge.  So far episodes inspired from her magazine include the strawberry spiral cake, the piña colada cake (strawberry powder topping), the lemon drop dessert drink (lemon shortbread cookie with thyme), and now these beignets!

To be fair, I do have a tendency to alter her recipes but I think everybody alters recipes they find.  That’s what is so great about cooking and baking.  Everybody can make a recipe their own by throwing in a bit of their personality.  For example in the strawberry spiral cake episode I use French buttercream with LorAnn oil.  This recipe is no exception.  The original recipe is called espresso-dusted beignets (click to check out the original recipe) where she combines powdered sugar and instant coffee for the topping of the beignets.  Instead I use a cinnamon-sugar topping.  I also prepare the recipe a little differently than the magazine does.  Instead of mixing the yeast with the dry ingredients I prepare it with warm evaporated milk.  I also increase the evaporated milk amount and take out the water.  I also add vanilla extract to the dough for added flavor.

The reason I decided to go with cinnamon sugar instead of coffee is totally for nostalgia.  When I was a kid my dad would take me on base to get my hair cut.  As a treat, we would get to eat little mini doughnuts that were covered with cinnamon sugar.  My brother and I would chow down on a bag on the ride home.  Eventually the doughnut guy went out of business and ever since then I’ve missed the taste of those cinnamon sugar doughnuts.  Since beignets are basically just doughnuts (it’s all delicious fried dough right?) I decided now would be a great time to relive my childhood.

I’d like to believe that I hit this recipe head on!  I brought this guys over to Punkin’s doggy daycare to the ladies who take good care of him during the day and Angie told me that it brought tears to her eyes.  She said it reminded her of what her mother used to make for her when she was growing up in Germany.  She even gave me a mix for a German vanilla sauce that her mother serves with hers.  It’s times like this that reminds me how powerful baking and pastry is.

Feel free to customize the recipe however you’d like!  Use different extracts to give your dough a different flavor or add nuts and dried fruit to the dough.  You can really go in any direction with toppings and sauce.  Cocoa powder, powdered sugar, fruit powder, and instant coffee are all great dry powdery toppings.  Pastry cream, creme anglais (vanilla sauce), chocolate sauce, whipped cream, jelly, and compotes would also be great with these guys!  Beignets are also very versatile being a great bite to go with your breakfast or as a sweet ending to a meal.

Here’s the recipe for the beignets.  Below is the video!  Thank you for watching!  Hope you enjoy!