Gluten Free Churros

Gluten Free Churros

There are several ways that I could start this post today:

• I've tried I don't know how many times to make churros, none of them with any sort of success...
• In my never-ending quest to find yummy recipes to please my gluten-limited son...
• The gluten-free cinnamon waffle nuggets I've been making lately have left me craving the real churros that they taste like...
• Gluten Free on a Shoestring has some amazing gluten free recipes...
• Finally, I have time to make something new and blog about it...

Suffice it to say, I am just thankful to have a warm house to make these in, money to buy the ingredients, a family who eats them with me, a blog to post them on, and the health to wake up in the morning and be able to enjoy everything mentioned above.

These churros are, in fact, delicious. I've stopped just short of making myself sick on them. 

*For a dairy free, egg free, vegan version of these gluten free churros, click here.

Gluten Free Churros
     --Adapted from Gluten Free on a Shoestring

Ingredients:

• 1 cup milk 
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 1/3 cups Better Batter Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• canola oil for frying
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Instructions:
In a medium sized heavy saucepan over medium heat, bring the milk and butter to a simmer. Stir in flour and stir vigorously for a minute or two, until the mixture comes together and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Remove from heat and transfer to the bowl of a standing mixer (or you can leave it in the pan to cool--but it will take longer).  When dough is cool enough to touch (about 10 to 15 minutes in the mixing bowl, longer in the pan), beat in the eggs, one at a time, incorporating each egg before adding the next (see below for what it should look like). 
Place a cooling rack over a sheet pan and cover with paper towels. Set aside.
In a shallow baking dish, mix the sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.
In a large sized heavy saucepan over medium-high heat, bring about 2 inches of canola oil to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
While oil heats, transfer batter to a piping bag fitted with a large open star tip (It really is worth investing the $6-$7 to make this happen, and there are so many other uses for these tools).
When oil has come to temperature, carefully squeeze about 5-6 inch ropes of batter into the oil, and use kitchen scissors to cut the end. Fry about 4 ropes at a time, turning when one side is well-browned. If churros seem to brown too quickly, reduce heat to medium and/or add a little more oil. I ended up frying churros about 1.5 minutes on each side.
Remove fried churros to the paper-towel lined cooling rack. Squeeze more churros into the hot oil. Then place the fried churros in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and turn to coat with cinnamon sugar. Place sugared churros on another paper towel lined surface and continue with this frying and coating cycle until you are out of batter.
Gluten Free on a Shoestring served her churros with a nice chocolate sauce, so you can go to that blog for that recipe. As for me and my family, we just ate them plain.
Makes...um...a lot of churros.  More than the four of us could eat for breakfast.

Milk, butter and flour mixture

The batter, after adding the eggs

This open star tip was sort of medium sized

Churros getting sugared