Churros con chocolate

Churros con chocolate is a traditional Spanish dessert developed by Spanish shepherds many centuries ago. It is also popular in Latin America and France.

Churros are long/spiraled Spanish doughnuts that are deep fried and dipped in hot chocolate sauce or café con leche (Spanish for coffee with milk). They are usually eaten for breakfast or served as a snack.

The chocolate sauce is very succulent and has a consistency somewhere between hot chocolate and chocolate pudding. You can alter the quantity of cornflour added according to how thick you want your sauce to be. The churros are very light and crispy on the outside but so tender on the inside! So you can see how the two elements of this dessert perfectly complement each other.



In Spain, you get churros mainly on the streets prepared by churro vendors, often know as 'churreros', and they use an instrument called the 'churrera' (see picture below - top) to pipe out the churros. Since i didn't have one of them, i used my pastry bag fitted with a large star tip and it worked just well! (see picture below - bottom)

But if you don't have a piping bag, then you can serrate one corner of a zip lock bag and fill it with the churro dough and pipe them out :)
And if you do not have a zip lock bag too, then it's time to go for some shopping! :D

When i came across this recipe on 'Baking Bites', i was craving for them right away that i couldn't resist  trying them out that same day! :D

Ingredients for churros
(makes around 25)

• 200ml water
• 80g unsalted butter
• pinch of salt
• 130g all purpose flour
• 150g eggs (approx. 3 eggs)
• vegetable oil for frying
• icing sugar

Method

• Bring the butter and water to a boil.

• When the mixture is boiling, add sifted flour and salt. 

 Stir immediately with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together. Stir and cook for about a minute.

• Transfer the dough to a clean bowl.

• Beat the eggs little by little at medium speed with an electric hand mixer. Wait till the egg has been well incorporated into the dough before adding more. 

Make sure to scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula and mix again. 

• Continue mixing until you get a smooth dough. Finally, give the dough a few quick folds with the spatula.

• Transfer the dough to the piping bag.

• Heat oil in a deep fry pan to 170-175 degrees Celsius. If you do not have a cooking thermometer, you can test if the oil is hot enough with little pieces of dough. If the dough sinks to the bottom of the pan and rises back to the surface, it's ready to go! :)

• Pipe around 5-6" of dough into the hot oil and fry till golden brown on both sides. 

• Place them on paper towels to drain off the extra oil. Dust with icing sugar.

Ingredients for Chocolate sauce

• 1tbsp cornflour
• 200ml milk
• 85g dark chocolate
• 40g sugar

Method

• Whisk together the cornflour with a bit of milk.

• Chop the chocolate into small pieces and heat with milk and sugar in a saucepan at medium heat.

• Add the cornflour (cornflour acts as a thickening agent and a binding agent. It helps to bind the milk and chocolate. It will take some time for the milk and chocolate to come together so be patient) and bring to a boil whisking occasionally till the sauce thickens.

• Strain the sauce into a bowl/cup and serve with the hot and crispy churros ( and by hot i mean straight off from the fryer, dipped in hot choc sauce and into the mouth! :D Therefore, you could start making the sauce after you've put the first batch of churros into the fryer)