Time to Make the Doughnuts

Who doesn’t love sweet fried dough?

As soon as I saw that Tartelette announced the “Time to Make the Doughnuts” event, my brain started spinning; yeast doughnuts, filled doughnuts… And then I thought to myself… “Wait a minute, I have never made doughnuts before!”. How could that be? I love doughnuts!

I have plenty of doughnut recipes and I love discovering new ones, but I have never made them. When I was in culinary school, I must have skipped that lesson. Oh, oh… So this was the perfect opportunity to take on the challenge.

These doughnuts have no yeast in them. They are actually made from fried choux paste. Instead of the traditional pastry cream, I decided to fill them with chiboust, which is pastry cream lightened with meringue. I thought the chiboust complements the light beignets much better than the thick pastry cream. As for the flavor… there I go with the caramel again! Bananas that are slowly cooked in a light caramel and then folded into the cream. Winter brings out all my caramel cravings!

Caramelized Banana Beignets with Chocolate Soup

Beignets

Makes about 4 dozen small beignets

250 ml water
Pinch of salt
150 grams flour
110 grams of unsalted butter
3-4 eggs
Canola oil to fry
Cinnamon sugar to dust

In a saucepan, place water, salt and butter and bring to a boil.
Add the flour all at once and stir with a wooden spoon. We want to cook the dough for a couple of minutes to cook out the starch flavor.
Transfer dough to a bowl and stir until it cools down a bit. Add the eggs, one at a time incorporating them into the dough.
Spoon small mounts of dough into the 350ºF canola oil and fry until golden brown.
Roll in cinnamon sugar and fill with the caramelized banana chiboust.

Caramelized Bananas

2 bananas
100 grams sugar
25 grams butter
50 grams heavy cream

Cut bananas in half and split each half down the middle, so you have eight banana quarters.
Make a dry caramel with the sugar and add the bananas to this caramel.
Add the cream and the butter and let the bananas simmer in the sauce for a few minutes until they are soft. Set aside.

Vanilla Chiboust

320g whole milk
½ vanilla bean, split
4 egg yolks
25 grams sugar
25 grams cornstarch
4 egg whites
35 grams sugar

In a medium saucepan, boil the milk and the vanilla bean.
In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch.
Temper the hot milk into the yolk mixture. Pour this custard back in the saucepan and cook until it thickens. Remove from pan and place in a clean bowl.
Add the cooked bananas into the warm pastry cream. I didn’t add most of the caramel, just the bananas . We want to keep some small pieces of banana.
While the pastry cream is still warm, we are going to make an Italian meringue with the egg whites and the sugar.
Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer. Turn the mixer on slow speed so the egg whites have a chance to develop some volume while we cook the sugar. We want the egg whites to be almost fully whipped when we add the hot syrup.
Place the sugar with a couple of tablespoons of water in a saucepan and cook until it reaches 240ºF or soft ball stage.
Pour the hot syrup over the whipped egg whites while the mixer is on low speed. Continue whipping until it has whipped into a meringue.

Carefully, fold the meringue into the warm pastry cream trying to keep as much volume as possible.

Place the caramelized banana chiboust into a pastry bag and pipe into the beignets.

Chocolate Soup

200 grams milk
100 grams heavy cream
100 grams 70% bittersweet chocolate

In a saucepan, bring cream and milk to a boil. Pour over chopped chocolate and stir until chocolate melts. Serve warm.

My parents are visiting from the Basque Country and my mother has been my devoted recipe taster. She particularly liked these beignets because she loves the light chiboust.

Eskerrik asko Ama!

And also… don’t you think this is a pretty sexy Valentine’s Day dessert too?

On Egin!