The Perfect Homemade French Crullers Recipe

Hi everyone, I'm Gemma Stafford and this week on Bigger Bolder Baking we are making traditional crullers. Here's how to do it. So crullers are pastries that are fried just like a donut. They're really light and absolutely lovely. The dough is not yeasted though, it's a little bit different. We're going to make it on the stove top and it's very similar to what we've done when we've made churros where it's more of a choux pastry than it is like a yeasted dough. So here I have a heavy bottom saucepan. I'm going to turn on medium heat and into this I'm going to add in some ingredients. My water, some milk, a little bit of sugar for sweetness, a smidge of salt for flavor, and some butter. Now all I want to do is just let this sit here and let those ingredients melt and then come to a simmer. So crullers origins are in Europe and it kind of comes from France, Germany. They're really popular, especially in parts of America that have been popularized by like German settlers, French settlers, things like that. So the Midwest, these are really popular and also in California. I love these because it's a light pastry and it's a mix of everything I love about a profiterole, a churro, eclairs, things like that. So there you go. The minute your mixture comes to a simmer, I'm going to add in some all-purpose flour and then with a whisk, we're going to whisk it in. It'll be a bit lumpy and porridge-y looking for like a second. Bring it together and then I switch out my whisk for a wooden spoon and all we want to do is just cook it for around a minute here. The pastry will come together in a ball and we just want to cook it a little bit for less than two minutes just to let that flour cook out. Okay, this is looking good. We're not trying to get any color on it or anything like that. Lovely, lovely. Let's take it off the heat and follow me over to the countertop. Before we start the next step, I did let this mixture cool down for a little bit just so it's not as hot coming from the stove top and then I'm going to add this into my stand mixer. Now just so you know, if you don't have a stand mixer, you can do this step by hand. It's totally possible. You just need a little bit of extra welly and I'm just not feeling that today so I'm using my stand mixer. Now what we want to do is turn this on with the Kbeater attachment and we're just going to add our room temperature eggs one at a time on like a medium speed. Let it combine. You'll see the mixture start to look like curdled eggs. Very common. Always happens. One egg in. Add in our other egg. Now make sure your eggs are room temperature because if these are cold and this is hot, you're talking scrambled eggs and we don't want that. So a fun fact about this recipe, it's actually been on the website for almost two years. But the thing about it is when we post it on social, like Facebook, people go nuts for it. Then we realized just recently we don't have a video for it. How do we not have a video for one of our most popular recipes on the website? So that's where we have to get on this and just show people how easy it is to make this recipe. You know, and if you follow me on social, you will see recipes that aren't made into videos. You'll see recipes that we have that are just posts on our website. So make sure you follow us on all platforms to keep up to date on the new recipes that we have coming out all the time. After your eggs, just go in and add a little bit of lemon zest. This adds a nice, bright and light flavor to it. Once it's combined, turn off your machine and you'll end up with a dough that looks like this. Not super runny, still holds a shape when it falls. This is the perfect cruller dough. There's a fine line with this guy, but I have to say this is a pretty awesome recipe. So here's what we need to do. This dough is soft and we have to pipe it later. So I'm going to put it into this bowl and I'm going to cover it with cling wrap. Now you want to lay the cling wrap directly on the pastry. I'll tell you why. If you don't, it can form a skin and we don't want that. So we're going to chill this for a minimum of an hour, but it actually can be made 24 hours in advance, which is super handy. I'm going to pop this into the fridge right now and get it nice and chilled. While our dough is chilling, I just want to make our glaze really fast so we have it ready to go. Because once our crullers are fried, we dip them in here, let them set and they're ready to be enjoyed. So here I have some powdered sugar. I'm going to add in a little bit of milk into this. And vanilla extract. Now this recipe is my basic vanilla glaze recipe. It works well for so many things, but it just gives these little crullers a lovely little kiss of sweetness and a hint of vanilla at the very end. There we go. So this is a good consistency for us to dip our crullers into. So I made a choux pastry ahead of time. It's been lovely and chilled and now it's really nice and thick, so perfect for piping. It's in a piping bag fitted with a nice big star nozzle to get those iconic ridges on our cruller. Here, I've got ready a little bit of parchment paper, some squares with three inch circles on them. All this information is in the written recipe. And you want to make those ahead of time and just get them ready. Now, I have my trays here. I'm going to put my paper down and all I'm going to do is do a circle around the perimeter of my drawing and then I'm going to seal the edges. Just like that. Just one circle. So now I don't want you to start freaking out in case you feel like you're not the best piper. Just follow the circle, don't overthink it. Do it in a swift motion and it'll come really easily to you once you do one or two. This recipe will make you around 16 to 18 crullers depending on how thick you pipe them. I have them on my tray here. I'm going to head over to the stovetop and let's start cooking them off. So once they're piped, you can start frying them off. So here I have a few inches of oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, something like that, in a high edged pan. It's a nice heavy bottom, good quality sauce pan when you're deep frying at home. So just make sure of that. I have it on medium heat. Now I don't use a thermometer, I'm kind of like old school, like Irish Mammy like that where I just look at stuff and I know when it's ready or not. So what I do to check if the oil is ready, I'm going to put in this wooden spoon and if it starts to bubble around that, see that, when it starts bubbling around, when it bubbles like that, it means that it's ready and it's the right temperature to start frying. If it doesn't bubble enough, let it get hotter, if it bubbles too much, maybe it's too hot. I can start to add in my paper. Now watch this, you're probably thinking you can't deep fry parchment paper. Here's what we're going to do. Lay them down gently, just lay them down gently, into the oil, face down. Don't worry about the parchment paper, I know you're freaking out, I can hear you, don't. It's okay. We are going to leave these in here for around a minute, then I'm going to go in and peel off that paper. And it comes straight off. Once you remove the paper, you're going to cook the donuts for around two minutes on each side. If they start to brown too quickly, it might mean that the oil is too hot. Use tongs when making your crullers for safety, it just keeps you at arm's length from the hot fat. Remove the donuts with tongs and put them onto a tray lined with a baking rack and let any excess oil drip off. Now all you have to do is continue with the rest of your crullers. So if you're into donuts as much as I am, I have so many videos for you to check out. I've got cake donuts, I've got beignets that have not been fried, I have homemade churros, so many delicious ones, so definitely check them out. Okay, lovely, that's our last donut. Now while they're still warm, I'm going to head over to the counter and dip them in our glaze. Drop your cooler into your icing, give it a turn, and let any excess drip off. Pop it back onto your cooling rack and continue with the rest. Give them a little shake to make sure they don't have too much icing on them. When the crullers are still warm when they're coated, the icing creates a nice shell. What is more satisfying than a freshly cooked, warm, homemade, fried, yummy donut? Mmm. Dipped in a vanilla glaze. I mean, it's the stuff that dreams are made of. The fun does not have to stop here. I have hundreds of baking videos for you to check out. And as always, I'll see you again next Thursday for a brand new video.