Fat Thursday is coming. This year we’re trying out churros, the Spanish doughnuts.

Tłusty Czwartek nadciąga. W tym roku próbujemy churros, czyli hiszpańskie pączki, znane też jako gniazdka.

We’ve made doughnuts, we’ve made angel wings. This year we’re aiming at something different. These doughnuts are often called nests in Polish (gniazdka) and sold glazed with icing.

The dough is called Choux pastry and is made by adding flour to a boiling mixture of water, butter and salt. After cooling it down, eggs are added after it cools down. It is interestingly light and tasty. This time we’re frying it, but it can easily be baked as well.

I used the recipe from Moje Wypieki.

Planning

The dough requires some attention, but there’s no proofing or anything like that. Also frying is rather time consuming.

You will need a saucepan and a mixer to make the dough, a sieve to prepare the flour, a pastry bag with a wide cake tip to dispense the dough, a baking parchment to dispense onto, a thermometer to control the temperature of the oil and paper towels to remove excess fat.

This is a tip that we used

Ingredients

This will make about 25 nests

• 200 g plain wheat flour
• 250 g water
• 100 g butter
• 4 eggs
• pinch of salt
• a lot of oil for frying

Preparation

1. Put water, butter and salt in a saucepan, mix and let it melt, bring to boil

2. Reduce heat and add the previously sifted flour, all at once. Stir thoroughly until it comes together

3. Keep stirring till the dough gets smooth and starts coming off the sides of the pan

4. Leave it aside to cool down

5. When cool, put in a mixing bowl and wisk it with the eggs, added one by one

6. Prepare small squares of paper coated with oil. 10x10cm should be ok

7. Transfer the dough into the pastry bag with a tip and start pressing circles onto a baking paper

8. Heat up the oil to 175-180 C degrees

9. Put the nests in the oil with baking paper facing upwards. It will start coming off after a minute or so. Remove it

   

   Removing the paper

10. Fry for 4-5 minutes on each side

11. Transfer onto the paper towel to remove the excess fat

12. Serve with an icing or just dusted with the icing sugar

    

    Churros, the nest

The nests are very tasty, they feel very light and airy. You can see in the picture above that they have expanded a bit during frying.

Enjoy the Fat Thursday! 🙂

Fat Thursday treats