Cooking with Booze: Churros and Chocolate Whiskey Sauce Recipe

You guys, churros and chocolate whiskey sauce! If this is wrong, I don't want to be right. I really don't know when I had my first churro, which sounds a bit like the history of churros, which no one seems to know the exact origin of. Some say it began with Spanish shepherds, while others claim it originated in China by Portuguese merchants who discovered something similar and decided to recreate it. What can't be argued is that they're delicious, and that I've had a lot of them, especially at baseball games. What am I supposed to do when someone is waving what amounts to a Spanish version of a cruller donut in my face?

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Recently, my friend and pastry connoisseur Beth Meyer went to Spain, where evidently churros are about as common of a breakfast item as croissants are in France. Why didn't I think of this? I'll never eat a S'mores Pop-Tart again. Naturally, being the pastry chef that Beth is, she recreated the Spanish delicacy, making her own churros recipe. So it was only appropriate to challenge Beth to create a whiskey version. Which essentially entails adding a couple tablespoons of whiskey to the chocolate sauce.

As Beth discusses in her original post, churros are essentially fried pastry dough made from Choux paste, which is also used in dessert recipes like eclairs and profiteroles (cream puffs). All you really need to have is a large star pastry nozzle and disposable pastry bags. Most everything else you probably have in the kitchen. See the full churros recipe below from Beth.

Churros and Chocolate Whiskey Sauce

Prep Time: 15 minutes; Cook Time: 45 minutes; Total Time: 60 minutes

Ingredients:

  • Churro choux paste:
  • 9 oz. water
  • 3.5 oz. butter
  • 1 tsp. grams sugar
  • 1 tsp. grams salt
  • 4.5 oz. strong flour (bread flour)
  • 4 whole eggs
  • Cinnamon

Chocolate whiskey sauce:

  • 3.5 oz. milk
  • 1.75 oz. heavy whipping cream
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • .75 oz. butter
  • 6.5 oz. dark chocolate

Instructions

For the chocolate whiskey sauce:

  1. Bring water and butter to a boil in a saucepan.
  2. Add sieved (sifted) flour, salt and sugar, stirring vigorously, until paste leaves side of pan clean. Remove heat and transfer to bowl.
  3. Gradually add eggs, incorporating together until paste drops off the scraper and is smooth. Transfer to piping bag with star nozzle.
  4. Fill a small frying pan with two inches of peanut oil and pipe out strips at a few inches long.
  5. Fry on each side for a few minutes until golden brown.
  6. Remove from pan and pat dry, rolling in cinnamon.
  7. For the chocolate sauce, bring milk, cream and sugar to a boil in a sauce pan.
  8. Lower temperature and add whiskey and gradually add chocolate, stirring the entire time. Add butter and continue to stir until smooth.