I'm also a big fan of the city of New Orleans. I've visited twice, seen the Superdome, walked Bourbon St., and enjoyed Hurricanes, po' boys, and, of course, beignets. In fact, I've enjoyed some of those things a little too much. So, to give the Saints a little support today, I figured this very morning, on Super Bowl Sunday, would be a great time to deep fry some beignets. This is also my fastest turnaround time ever for a blog post, having finished eating them just hours ago.
A beignet (pronounced ben-yay) is a small piece of fried dough. Very simple concept, but also very delicious. They are perhaps most famously made at Cafe du Monde, a coffee house open in New Orleans since 1862. They are open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, only closing for Christmas and hurricanes. No one should leave New Orleans, without stopping by there first.
I'd been too busy this week, to look up recipes or actually go buy any ingredients, but I had a bag of gourmet Southern biscuit mix I'd received as a gift, and I thought this would work perfectly if I mixed it up and deep friend it instead of baking it. Oddly, there were absolutely no directions on the bag of mix aside from "just add milk and butter." In a big bowl, I added the little bit of milk left in my apartment, some butter (I decided on 2 tbsp; less than a lot of my friends might have expected from me.), and mixed it up. It wasn't nearly as well mixed as it needed to be, and I was out of milk, so I had to add additional water instead. I was a little concerned this might mess it up, but I went ahead anyways.
Then I fired up the deep fryer (375F, obviously) and dropped some clumps of batter in there.
They took on some great shapes and had a really cool texture. They also fried very easily on the surface of the oil and after several minutes and a few flips, they were good to go. The first one I took out was still slightly gooey on the inside, but after that I cooked the batches longer and they were cooked through very nicely.
Then, as is the custom, I covered these in a generous portion of powdered sugar. Looking back, I kind of dropped the ball by not making hot chocolate (I'm not much of a coffee drinker.) to go with these. They are outstanding dipped in hot chocolate.
But, I was able to enjoy a delicious plate of these as I watched some of the many hours of Super Bowl pregame coverage. Coincidentally, one of the first things I watched on ESPN while eating these was footage around New Orleans, including some shots of the always-busy Cafe du Monde.
Enjoy your Super Bowl parties everyone, and just for today: Go Saints!
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