Beignets

Posted on by Julia

I was craving donuts, so I decided to make beignets as they are an easy donut to make. I made a modification to the Classic Beignets recipe from the King Arthur Baking site. I was pleased with how the beignets turned out. The beignets satisfied my donut craving.

Makes about 30 beignets

Ingredients

Dough

  • 1cup (113g) water, lukewarm (90 to 110 F)
  • 4 tablespoons buttermilk powder
  • 2 tablespoons (28g) butter, melted
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons (12g) table salt
  • 4 cups (480g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
  • 2 teaspoons instant yeast

For Rising and Rolling Out

  • Up to 1 tablespoon of oil or butter
  • Up to 1/2 cup of flour

For Frying

  • A bottle of a high smoking point oil, such as vegetable oil, peanut oil, corn oil, etc

For Serving

  • Powdered (confectioners’) sugar

Tools:

Stand mixer with bread hook really helps, large bowl, refrigerator, silicone rolling mat (if you have one), bench knife or a small knife, electric fry pan or heavy bottomed 10” fry pan, tongs, paper towels, sifter, plastic wrap or a cover for the large bowl, instant read thermometer or candy thermometer, rolling pin, ruler, 2 plates

Instructions

Dough

  1. Combine all the ingredients for the dough into the bowl of the stand mixer. Using the bread hook, mix and knead them together until a smooth, soft dough forms.
  2. Remove the dough hook and the bowl from the stand mixer and cover the bowl for 1 hour. The dough should be puffy, but it doesn’t have to be doubled. Oil or butter the large bowl.
  3. Gently deflate the dough and place in the oiled or buttered bowl. Cover the bowl and place in the refrigerator overnight or up to 2 days.
  4. When ready to finish making the beignets, flour or oil the silicone rolling mat or clean counter top. Remove the dough from the fridge and gently dump it out onto the prepared silicone rolling mat or counter top.
  5. With the rolling pin, roll the dough into a 14” by 10” rectangle, squaring off the corners as best you can. You don’t need to be overly fussy about the corners. The ruler is helpful to get the dough rolled out to the right size.
  6. Using the ruler, measure 2” rows on rectangle of dough and mark the dough by pressing down with the bench knife or small knife to leave a small mark on the edge. Mark the dough on both sides of the rectangle. Measure 2” columns on the rectangle of dough and mark the dough top and bottom of the rectangle.
  7. Cut the dough along the rows and columns to create 2” squares of dough. Warning: if using a silicone rolling mat, use a bench knife instead of a knife so you don’t damage it.

Frying Beignets

  1. Pour the high smoking point oil to a depth of at least 3/4″ in a 10″ electric fry pan (first choice), or a deep, heavy-bottomed 10″ frying pan set over a burner.
  2. Heat the oil (if using a burner, heat over medium heat) until the thermometer reads 360°F.
  3. While heating the oil, set up a couple of plates with paper towels on them.
  4. Once the oil reaches 360°F, drop 5 or 6 squares of dough into the hot oil. They’ll sink to the bottom and after about 5 seconds or so, rise to the top.
  5. Fry the beignets for 1 minute, then use a pair of tongs to flip them over. Fry the beignets for another minute, until the they are puffed and golden brown all over.
  6. Using the tongs, carefully remove the beignets from the oil, place on the plates covered with paper towels and let the beignets drain on the paper towels.
  7. To fry the rest of the beignets, repeat the frying from step 4 until all the squares of dough have been fried. Important: make sure the oil has heated back up to 360°F before frying more beignets.

For Serving

  1. When the beignets are cool to the touch, using a sifter, heavily cover the beignets with confectioners’ sugar.
  2. To help cut the sweetness of the beignets and for a real New Orleans experience, serve beignets with strong coffee. French Market or Community Coffee are common coffees in the South.

Notes:

You don’t need a stand mixer to mix and knead the dough. It just helps since the dough is a slack dough.

Don’t crowd the pan when frying the beignets.

Make sure the oil has heated back up before starting to fry the next batch of beignets.

The beignets are not very sweet until covered with confectioners’ sugar.

Cooling Down
Just a Bite

I couldn’t wait to try a beignet, so I ate one before covering them with confectioners’ sugar.

26 thoughts on “Beignets”

      1. I have had the real Café Beignet and the mix. They were both good, but I am thinking to be fair, I need to come eat some of yours just to be sure I am not missing out on anything. What time will the next batch be ready? 😎

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    1. I don’t care for most American donuts. However, I just love Lamer’s Donuts in the Denver, Colorado area. I love sopapillas with honey and cinnamon. I haven’t ever had a sufganiot, but they sound delicious. I may have had a bomboloni when I was a child. The pastry, donut, and cake shop across from my grandfather’s feed mill made something that I think was a bomboloni.

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    1. I don’t deep fry things very often anymore. I just kept wanting a donut. I even considered try to bake these, but decided I wanted the full fat and sugar experience. I’ll be set now for another 5 years.

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  5. Yum! Wayne uses peanut oil when cooking his fresh caught fish. I have been seeing a lot of recipes lately for small batches, like cookie bars for 2. I have not tried any of them yet, but I plan to. Sometimes I want a treat but not 2 or 3 dozen!

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    1. Small batch recipes do seem to have become popular. I’ve been eyeing them as well and wondering if they are any good. I had to figure out what to do with all the leftover beignets. They become my breakfast for a few days and I really didn’t want that much fried food.

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  6. Right, that is the problem. I end up eating too many, because “they are best when fresh” and because you do not want to waste them. If you try some small batch recipes that will make a good blog post.

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Published by Julia