A lil story of Beignets

When I was curating the other day, I found a beignets recipe shared by @linita. But the first time I came across beignets was from Chef, an adventure style cooking movie that at one point, the characters travel to New Orleans. In that movie, they visited Cafe Du Monde which apparently is famous for their beignets and the cafe au lait. It was the cinematography that made me drool over it, while in fact, Indonesian sort of have similar beignets and we’re calling it odading. Anyway, Chef is a movie I watched a long time ago but thanks to that recipe, it came to my attention again. However, in this recipe I do not follow all ingredients shared by @linita, I also modified it with my recipe and a reference to this recipe that specifically made it with matcha.I know it’s probably a bit of cooking blasphemy but I like matcha and want to give beignets a little twist.

Bussin Matcha Beignets With Cafe Au Lait

As usual, in this measurement it will yield more than 10 small beignets. So, you don’t have to worry about not being able to share these yummy and soft beignets with others.

Here’s the step-by-step

• Put active yeast, water (has to be warm, not too cold nor hot), and sugar 1 tbsp sugar and let it rest for 10 minutes to bloom the yeast.
• In a separate bowl, mix 1 whole egg + egg yolk, add melted butter, salt, vanilla powder.
• Whisk the wet ingredients and add milk slowly and finally the yeast mixture.
• Then, add the liquid mixture to the flour by adding it slowly and make sure to stir it well.
• If you don’t have a mixer, you can just use your hands and make sure the dough is not sticky anymore.
• Then, make a round with the dough and rest it for an hour.
• After resting the dough, roll with the pin and cut into squares.
• Then, heat frying oil and fry beignets until they turn golden brown.
• Finally sprinkle beignets with matcha powder
• And if you don’t like matcha, just give them a nice confectioner’s sugar bath!
• Enjoy with Cafe Au Lait!

Here are some tips that I learned.

• Cut them neatly and in a bigger batch, that’s easier to make perfect shapes.
• Actually, you can use more sugar into the mixture so that it becomes a bit sweeter than it should. Be generous with it.
• Don’t overproof them and rest them for too long. I actually did with mine because I fell asleep but that actually is fine, phew!
• You don’t actually have to bathe them. Just sprinkle the confectioner’s sugar on top but I prefer mine to be bathed.
• Once you eat them, you sort of want more!

I made this recipe at around two in the morning just cause I can’t sleep. Since it’s also the weekend and I promise to only make things on the weekend, it was super satisfying. Like I said above, I even fell asleep but it turned out that I woke up at the perfect time when it was breakfast time. The cafe au lait I made was cherry on top and would help me kickstart my week but I certainly don’t recommend this for everyday breakfast unless you want to get diabetus from the sugars. So despite being sick, I am forcing myself to fight off the cold by doing things and it often really helps me get better quicker than when I am just laying down and doing nothing. To close this, as I mentioned earlier, beignets in Indonesia, according to my mom, are like roti goreng which basically means fried doughnut but I have to say, it’s different. Roti goreng or odading uses white sesame seeds and simple ingredients which means, without butter and milk. More often than not, roti goreng also didn’t use confectioner’s sugar and for obvious reasons, it’s not a breakfast either. It’s just a snack which is unlike beignets can be eaten during breakfast, as a dessert or a midnight snack.