Beignets and Cafe au Lait

I have fond memories of sitting in the French Quarter on vacation, having beignets and cafe au lait each morning for breakfast. It was nice to relive that experience at home, and everything was just as good as I remember it. The beignets were a lot easier to make than I thought they would be. I would say the entire work time was only about 30 to 45 minutes. I found the cafe du monde chicory coffee at Whole Foods.

 

I used this recipe, but I converted it to grams and made enough for only one dozen (1/5th of the original). I also used instant yeast instead of active dry yeast.

 

200g bleached all-purpose flour

20g sugar

3/16th teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

20g beaten egg

10g vegetable shortening

71g water

50g evaporated milk

 

I fried these in about 1 to 1.5 inches of peanut oil. I raised the oil temperature to 370 per the recommendations on the Cafe du Monde website.

 

For the cafe au lait, I brewed 1.5 ounces of Cafe du Monde chicory coffee with 30 ounces of water (6 cup mark on my coffee maker). I heated 25 ounces of milk, and made the cafe au lait by combing 1/2 coffee and 1/2 hot milk. Makes five 10 ounce mugs of coffee (see here for more details). I almost forgot how good this stuff is!

Done