Gluten Free Churros

In the spring, I sent my 15 year old to Spain with a school group.  Every day on Facebook, I saw pictures of my son with his friends eating chocolate con churros at various cafes in Spain.  (This mommy who has never even had a passport until a couple months ago was very jealous!... When a mysterious stranger dies and leaves me a fortune I think I will spend a couple years sampling food at cafes around the world :-))

My picky eater tried all sorts of things in Spain that blew me away, squid, I really want to know how they got him to eat it; not only eat it, but enjoy it!  He came home with a taste for churros and hamburgers still pink inside, looking older and debonair in a scarf.  Of all the wonderful (and some not so great looking) things that they ate, the churros looked the best!  And I realized that somehow in my pre-diagnosis days, I had never, ever had a churro! How did that happen?

Challenge Accepted!

When I researched how to make churros, I discovered they are a very easy and simple thing to make.  I always looked at them at the event vendors and assumed I needed some special equipment to make them.  Not so: a simple pastry bag with a star tip does the trick. 

Please excuse my shortage of pictures, I don't know what I did, but halfway through making these, my camera had a conniption fit and corrupted my pictures!  These are really very easy to make.  The only thing I really want to stress is cooking them way longer than you think you need to.  The goal is to make them crispy, which requires cooking long enough to get quite dark brown.

Rather than making a chocolate from scratch, we did it the lazy way and used special dark hot fudge and I stirred some whole milk into it.

(printable Recipe)

Churros:

Heat vegetable oil in large pan for frying.  Don’t heat above 340°. 

6 Tablespoons butter

1 Cup milk

¼ Cup Sugar

A pinch of salt

A pinch of cinnamon

Heat over medium heat until boiling

Whisk in ½ cup brown rice flour and keep beating until it forms a ball, one to two minutes. 

Place ¼ cup tapioca starch in food processor with the blade attachment.  Add the dough ball and turn on the food processor.  Process until fully blended and let cool for about 5 minutes.  

Add 2 eggs, one at a time, and process until batter is smooth and thick.

Scoop batter into a pastry bag with a large star tip.  When the oil is hot, pipe the batter into the oil.  It will puff up almost double.  Allow to cook about 5 minutes until dark golden brown.  You may be tempted to turn them early because they are getting nicely brown, but resist the temptation!  You want them crispy.  Turn them over and cook on the other side an additional 5 minutes.

Remove from oil and place on paper towels.  Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon sugar and serve with chocolate sauce.

I made a double batch and my kids inhaled them!