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Gemma's Bigger Bolder Baking Baked Churros & Hot Chocolate
Hi Bold Bakers! I always try to share with you recipes that are an easier version of
the conventional way that things are made. Like ice cream without an ice cream machine.
Or making a cake without using an oven. So today, I'm going to show you how to make Churros
without using a deep fryer and trust me these ones are even better than the fried version. So let's get baking!
When I made my Baked Donuts video, I got such a positive reaction from all of you and great
photos of your final results so I have a feeling you are really going to like these baked churros.
The dough that you use for making a churro is essentially a choux pastry.
We're going to start out in a heavy bottomed sauce pan. Add in your water, butter, sugar,
and salt. And then when the butter is melted, bring all of these ingredients to a simmer.
Now that our water is simmering, we're going straight in with our flour. You want to whisk
this in so it doesn't make any lumps. Turn down the heat on your pan and start to almost cook
your dough and you'll see it start to form a ball. You just want to move it around for a few
seconds, cook it for a little bit, it kind of dries it out a little bit. Now don't worry,
if you don't have brown sugar for this recipe, you can go ahead and use white. All you want to
do is cook this dough for around a minute. And there we have it. Turn off the heat, our
dough is done. As you can see it's a nice, firmer dough. We're going to set this dough
aside and prepare our eggs to add into it.
In a separate jug, we're going to add in our eggs and vanilla extract. And then whisk them
all together. It's important to use room temperature eggs because we want them to be a similar
temperature to the dough that we're going to add them into.
Our next step is to add our eggs into our dough. I'm going to add a little bit of eggs
at a time. And I'm going to mix them in with a spatula. This is why we only add in a little
bit of eggs at a time so you can incorporate it easily. A little bit of eggs and a lot of
elbow grease. Once you add in your eggs, it's very natural for your dough to look like this. Don't worry.
Take your time and just keep mixing in those eggs. Ok, great. I can see my dough coming together.
Ok. Phew. And his is what your choux pastry should look like. A little bit soft but totally
pipeable. It's going to work great.
To prepare your piping bag to make churros, you're going to use a star nozzle. If you
only have a round one, that's ok. But traditionally when you get a churro at the fair or circus
it always has those lovely ridges and that's from a star nozzle.
And then just fill your piping bag 3/4 of the way with your choux pastry. Piping bags are always
a good investment. I usually buy a big roll and then I always have them when I need them.
Have a little bit of space on top and then we're ready to pipe.
When baking these churros, I like to double tray them because it's such a delicate dough
that it has a tendency to burn underneath so if you double tray with two good quality
trays then you should have no trouble.
A good little trick to stop you parchment paper from blowing around in the oven is take a
little bit of your choux pastry. You put it on the tray. Just a little dot. And then stick
down your paper. Under that corner. Just a tiny little dot.
To pipe your churro, put pressure on your piping bag and make sure the churro comes
out nice and thick. And then take a knife and wipe away the pastry. And then give the
next one a little bit of space, put some pressure on your piping bag, try and keep it straight.
And then when you get the length that you want, just take the pastry away with a knife.
Just like my baked donuts, you can actually fry this dough as well, if you want to. But
I think once you bake them and you see how great they are, you won't want to fry them.
And make sure to give a nice bit of room to the churro beside it so they don't bake into
each other. So because this dough is a choux pastry, you can use it for making cream puffs
and profiteroles and it will work great. Then just keep on piping your churros until all
of your dough is gone.
But just before them go into the oven, here's a little Bold Baking science tip for you.
We're going to dust them with a little bit of water. And we do this because once it goes
into the oven, the heat hits the water and it evaporates and creates steam. And then
your churros go poof and get nice and big and that's exactly what we want.
Now your churros are ready so pop them in the oven.
What you'll most commonly see served with churros is a really thick and rich hot chocolate.
So while our churros are in the oven, we're going to make one.
In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, we're going to heat up some milk until it comes to a simmer.
Once your milk comes to a simmer, we're going to add in our chocolate. Now I'm using some
dark chocolate discs and a little bit of milk chocolate to get a good balance of bitter
and sweet. But as long as you use good quality, I'm happy.
Go ahead and whisk in your chocolate until it's melted. Next add in some vanilla extract.
To thicken up our hot chocolate, we're going to mix some corn flour with a little bit of
water. And what this is called is making a slurry and it's just a little thickening agent.
You should never add corn flour straight into any product because it will clump up and not be nice.
While your hot chocolate is simmering, we're going to add in our corn starch mix. Pour it in
and vigorously whisk. You'll see your hot chocolate start to thicken and be really gorgeous.
I love this hot chocolate so much.
At this stage, you want to let it simmer for another 2 minutes because you need to activate
that corn starch and let it thicken even more. You just might want to stand here and give
it a little whisk as it does. And there you have it, a beautiful hot chocolate to serve
with your churros. It's so fast to make, I made it while the churros are in the oven
and I know you guys can too.
Our timer has gone off but rather than take out our churros right now we're going to leave
them and turn off the oven completely. And what this does is dry out your churros and
helps them keep their shape without collapsing on themselves. Do this step and you'll have
perfectly shaped churros.
To make the cinnamon sugar for the churros, we're going to take a little baggie. Add in
some sugar, some cinnamon, and a little bit of salt. And then we're going to mix them
all together. This is the total mess free way of doing this, believe me.
The reason I add a little bit of salt to this mix is that it brings out the flavor of the
churros and the cinnamon so I strongly suggest adding a little bit in.
Our churros are ready to come out of the oven. These churros look fantastic. They're beautiful
golden brown all over. The bottom is a nice color, not too toasty. They're going
to make fantastic churros.
Once our lovely churros are out of the oven, we want to dip them straight away in our cinnamon
sugar. Take your lovely warm churro. Pop it into your bag. And toss it around in the cinnamon
sugar. Don't be tempted to eat one yet just lay them on your rack for now. Keep on tossing
your churros in the cinnamon sugar. The reason I do it while they're still warm is the sugar
sticks so much better to them. How pretty are these little churros? They're perfect.
Why would you fry churros when you can bake them and make them look like this?
You can make a variety of different shapes you don't just have to do long. You can do
little churro nibblets. You can also make churro hearts, which are super sweet. No matter
what shape you make them they're going to taste great.
Pour yourself a big mug of hot chocolate, dip your churros, and enjoy immediately.
Can you see the inside? It looks just like a churro.
You guys have to try this out and tell me if baked is better than fried because I think
I know what you're going to say.
These are SO good. Mmm. Yummy!
Thank you so much for subscribing to my channel. I'll see you back here Monday for my breakfast
series and of course every Thursday for another episode of Bigger Bolder Baking.