New Orleans Beignets
Par Laurie le 26 juin 2016, 16:05 - Bread, buns, biscuits, bagels - Lien permanent
I love beignets to distraction. They remind me of my granny's baking. She'd do simple things like French toast and beignets for her numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It was always a treat and I still remember the smell wafting through the air.
Now, though, I'm a grown-up and I'm trying to eat well and avoiding oil as much as possible, opting for oven-baked recipes instead. I came across this recipe on Pinterest not long ago and tried it a couple of times. It's from goodhousekeeping.com. I chose not to make the sauce that goes with them and instead tried them with butterscotch (see this recipe in my trifle, parfaits and curds section). Oh my! It's so good!
For about 30 beignets:
1/4 cup warm water
1 pack dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar and 1 additional tsp
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 Tsbp butter, cold and crumbed
1 egg
3/4 cup buttermilk (that's 3/4 cup milk whisked with a tsp lemon juice)
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
Whisk together warm water, yeast and tsp sugar. Set aside for 5 mn.
Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar. Add the butter and crumb with your hands or the flat hook of your Kitchenaid. Did I tell you how blessed I am have one of these and how super easy it is to become a baker when you have it? Rambling? OK. Back to our recipe.
Add the yeast mixture then the buttermilk and finally the egg. Knead the dough until well-mixed and stretchy.
Leave covered in a warm place for 10 mn. Your oven preheated to its minimum temperature for 15 mn then switched off will do the trick.
On a dusted surface, shape the dough into a square then roll it with a pin into a rectangle. Cut 30 square in it with a pizza cutter or a knife. Place on a baking sheet, cover and let rise for 20 mn in a warm place.
Bake 10 to 12 mn at 400°F.
Toss in confectioners' sugar while hot. You can use a paper bag filled with confectioners' sugar. Place a few beignets in it, fold the top of your bag and shake.
Serve with a sauce. It can be chocolate, chocolate with a bit of expresso or butterscotch, my favorite. Or you can serve it with custard cream if you're really hungry!
For the record, I don't often make mistakes when baking but I did the first time I made these. My labrador was trying to look as cute as he could on that day and I was not paying enough attention to the recipe. Anyway, I forgot to add the sugar to the dough. Well, you know what? It wasn't that bad. Actually, the beignets came out just fine and dunk in the butterscotch, you really don't need that much sugar anyway.
It reminded me of that story my granny used to tell me about that little boy who'd discovered a new recipe for candy by misreading the original one. Chance works in mysterious ways!