Beignets, French Donuts

The art of loving French donut

I grew with a big "amour" shared between carbon drink and sinful donuts (the one's with creamy filling or chocolate coatings and nuts). As most people I met, they find it startling that for someone who was born in Asia I was way far the paradigms of hot Jasmin tea or sweet sticky rice balls or any local sweets that we love to devour in Asia, that is normally good for health. Well, who can blame me if I find them truly irresistible.

So discovering that there exist not even one shop of my favorite American donut in France (not even their competitor) this broke my heart into million pieces. So I presume you imagine how I react everytime we are outside France and there is an opportunity to enjoy my favorite: I consume in the average 2-3 donuts per day. My french family would often ask me how could I eat that? For they really consider it bad for health. Fried in deep-oil then stuffed later on with heavy filling and coated lastly with lots of nuts, chocolate and sugar. I know we are not getting any younger and that eating healthy food is essential at all cost. But I always believe that we have right to these little pleasures of life without explosing too much our arteries from time to time.

I'll be sending these donuts over at Ruth (Ruth's Kitchen Experiments) for her Bookmarked Recipes. Just check out the link to know more about the details.


By the way, I'll be posting the round-up of my Perfect Party Dishes this week. A big hug and thanks again to all the participants. I'll be announcing the winner and the prize, so stay tune!



Beignets or French Donuts

-These are pastries made from deep fried dough. It can be sweet powdered with sugar, with fruits or it can also be savory. This recipe is taken from a old french gourmet magazine (Cuisine Gourmand April 2005 edition)

150 g of flour
1 tablespoon of orange water
50 g of sugar
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 egg
10 cl of warm milk
1 sachet of dry yeast
a pinch of salt
cooking oil for deep frying
and icing or granulated sugar for coating

Dissolve the dry yeast in warm milk. Separate the egg yolk from the white. In a bowl put the flour, half of the sugar, the salt, the orange water, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and the egg yolk. Mix them well. Then add the yeast-milk mixture in the flour. Mix well and let it stand for three hours. Whisk the egg white until it becomes firm, then add the rest of the sugar. Mix them well. Add this mixture on the dough and combine them until it becomes homogenous. Warm your oil in a deep frying pan. Scoop a spoonful of your dough and slide it directly to the warm oil. It should be cook on both sides until its golden brown, about five minutes. After cooking dry them in

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I find the recipe a bit runny. The original recipe calls for additional of 10 cl of beer, that I did not add because the dough was already too watery. I added more flour about 50 grams to find the consistency I wanted. I suggest you could also also put some honey or spices (cinnamon, nutmeg) to this recipe. While cooking it is advisable to deep fry them with lots of oil. You can also coat them with some sesame seeds and honey.




Other sweet recipes:

Ile Flottante
Lemon Yogurt Mini-Cakes
Matcha Mint Cupcake