Friday, June 24, 2011
Today is Friday and I am still struggling to keep my commitment to baking! I have been traveling for work so I have been extremely busy in the last two weeks. So even though its not Sunday, I wanted to bake to make up for last week. Today I decided on zeppole which is an italian donut. I have watched various chefs on TV make these (Giada DeLaurentiis in particular) and I have always wanted to try it.
The recipe looks simple and very similar if not identical to the dough I make for cream puffs. The one part of this recipe I was skeptical of, and probably is why I have put making these off so long, is frying. My solution was to enlist my Dad, Dean, to do the frying.
The dough was created by melting butter, sugar and a pinch of salt in a pan. When the mixture comes to a boil, I stirred in a cup of flour to create a thick dough. Once the dough comes together in a ball, I took it off the heat and mixed in four eggs, one at a time.
While I put the dough together, my dad heated vegetable oil to 375 degrees. Using a small ice cream scooper we put dollops of dough in the oil. The first few donuts were much to large and after the recommended 5 minutes of frying, while the outside of the donuts were browned, the inside was totally raw. We decided to make the donuts much, much smaller. This seemed to work better and 5-6 minutes in the oil was perfect.
Once the donuts were made and the excess oil dripped off, I rolled the donuts in cinnamon sugar. The donuts looked great and tasted okay. My Dad and brother really liked them, but I still wasn't crazy about the texture of the dough in the middle. The outside was lovely and crisp, but the inside, while it was cooked through, didn't appeal to me.
I am hoping to bake again on Sunday this weekend with guest blogger Michael, just home from Italy, so stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment