New Orleans at Home with Bourbon Street Beignets

I’ve never been to New Orleans, in fact, I’ve never had much of a desire to go there. Well, until I found out about beignets. These sweet, little, doughy balls of goodness have me ready to hop a flight straight to Louisiana just so I can get a taste of them right from the source.

I was first introduced to the idea of making beignets through the KitchenAid Recipe Collection Cookbook. While this little jewel of a recipe is included in the breads section, it is most certainly a sweet desert! After seeing them featured on the font cover of the cookbook, I couldn’t wait to try them myself.

The problem is in order to make this recipe I had to work with two things that I’m afraid of.

Yeast and Hot Oil.

More so the hot oil. I’m so terrified of burning down my kitchen (or entire house) that I avoid using hot oil at all costs. But it was a risk I was willing to take just to sample these.

The process started with dissolving one packet of dry yeast in 1/4 cup of water (temperature between 105 – 115 degrees F).

With the yeast and water mixture set aside, you mix the sugar, shortening, salt and boiling water (see recipe below)  in an electric mixer until the shortening is fully dissolved (about 3 minutes). Next, add the cream, beaten egg, yeast mixture and 3 cups of flour to the mixing bowl.

Using the dough hook, stir the dough for about 2 minutes, then slowly add the remaining cup of flour and continue to knead the dough for 2 – 4 minutes longer, until the dough forms a ball around the hook.

While the oil is heating in a cast iron skillet to 360 degrees F, place the dough on a lightly floured cutting board. The cookbook directions suggest you roll the dough into a 10 x 24 inch rectangle but there are two problems with this. 1) I’m not searching the house for a ruler and 2) dough in the shape of a rectangle? …. which led to me to just rolling the dough out until it was between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick. Seeing as I’ve never done this before, it was just a guess that happened to turn out quite well.

Once the oil is fully heated, drop the dough squares in about 4 at a time and fry on each side for about 3 minutes total. Drain the fried beignets on paper towels and dust coat well in powdered sugar. Give them a minute or two to cool off before popping one in your mouth … as good as they look, they’re HOT! No really, HOT as in torch your tongue hot. I learned the hard way ….. twice.

Bourbon Street Beignets (courtesy of KitchenAid Recipe Collection Cookbook)

Ingredients

• 1 package active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water (105 F – 115 F)
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons shortening
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 egg, beaten
• 4 cups all purpose flour
• oil for deep frying
• powdered sugar, the more the better

Directions

See text above