Pigs in Blankets

Lent Buñuelos

Buñuelos are a typical dessert found in almost every bakery in Spain during lent. They look like mini-doughnuts and taste like cinnamon, lemon, and anise.

Ingredients

Zest of one lemon
30 g fresh yeast
5 g anise seeds
Sunflower oil
3 egg yolks
35 g butter
250 g flour
100 g milk
35 g sugar
20 g water
cinnamon
5 g salt

Instructions

Mix all dry ingredients in an electric mixer. Mix water and milk and add little by little while kneading the dough. Keep kneading for at least ten minutes. Add butter in cold chunks, one by one until fully incorporated into the dough. Remove from mixer and knead by hand (it will be very sticky) on a countertop (preferably marble so the dough doesn't heat up). Knead until the dough stops sticking to the counter. Wet your hands with sunflower oil, and make a ball with the dough.

Wrap a tray with Saran wrap and spread a thin layer or sunflower oil over it. With sunflower oil on your hands, weigh 20 g pieces of dough, round them and place them on the tray. Make sure the balls are round and the surface is smooth. Let them rest for 15 minutes.

Heat a frying pan with sunflower oil until it reaches 160 ºC. Pick up a ball, tear a hole in the middle and place it in the hot oil. Let it gold on one side, turn and let the other side turn golden too. Remove from oil, drain on top of a wire rack and drizzle with anise liquor, and let the buñuelos rest for a minute, until the liquor is absorbed. Coat the buñuelos with granulated sugar and let them cool. Repeat process with the remaining boils, making sure not to fry many of them at one time (to prevent the heat from cooling) and making sure the temperature doesn't rise too much.

Source: Hofmann cooking school recipe book