Recently we have had a few casual dinners with a group of friends and to make things interesting, we chose a country's theme for each one and everyone brought their favourite meal to share.
Our Italian dinner was a huge hit with homemade pizzas cooked on the BBQ, a fabulous antipasto platter and a tiramisu cake made by moi.
Our most recent dinner was Mexican theme and it was amazing - chicken burritos, tacos, chili con carne, vegetarian fajitas, nachos. YUM. The only Mexican dessert I could think of was churros but our past adventures in deep frying have not turned out well. But then what should pop up in my google reader but some baked churros from the fabulous Sprinkle Bakes! That, my friends, is destiny.
Heather's recipe is really detailed and has some great tips so I won't post it again here. You will find the recipe on Sprinkle Bakes here.
My notes:
- for fellow Aussies 1/3 cup butter is 80 grams
- Heather said if using butter they would spread more but I found they didn't spread at all. After the first tray I realised that and placed them much closer together, meaning fewer batches were required.
- not sure if we were meant to cool the mixture before piping but I almost burnt my hands trying to pipe these all out
- I doubled the recipe as it had to feed a crowd.
- I couldn't find the exact size piping tip Heather recommended anywhere (mine was 11mm rather than 14mm) so I got about 50 little churros from the double batch!
- I baked them in the afternoon then took them cold to the party. They reheated well in an oven (not a grill) and we rolled them in cinnamon sugar after that.
- I had to almost double the initial baking time to get any colour and crispiness on them
Overall these were fantastic! They tasted amazing, just as good as fried ones though perhaps with slightly less crunch. It made for a pretty special dessert for not that much effort and everyone loved them.
Chili Chocolate Sauce
250grams dark chocolate (70% cocoa), finely chopped
250ml pure cream
1 tbs brown sugar
1 ts chili powder
1 red chili to decorate
Place the cream and the chilli powder in a medium saucepan and heat until just before boiling. Add the sugar and chopped chocolate and stir gently until the chocolate has melted and the sauce is smooth. Pour into a serving dish and sprinkle with chopped fresh chilli.
Serve warm with the churros and maybe some vanilla ice cream.
