Home › Bread and Bread Making › Crullers
Crullers
1/4 cup butter 1 cup sugar Yolks 2 eggs Whites 2 eggs 4 cups flour 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1 cup milk Powdered sugar and cinnamon Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, yolks of eggs well beaten, and whites of eggs beaten stiff. Mix flour, nutmeg, and baking powder; add alternately with milk to first mixture; toss on floured board, roll thin, and cut in pieces three inches long by two inches wide; make four one-inch parallel gashes crosswise at equal intervals. Take up by running finger in and out of gashes, and lower into deep fat. Fry same as Doughnuts I. Strawberry Short Cake I 2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons sugar 3/4 cup milk 1/4 cup butter Mix dry ingredients, sift twice, work in butter with tips of fingers, and add milk gradually. Toss on floured board, divide in two parts. Pat, roll out, and bake twelve minutes in a hot oven in buttered Washington pie or round layer cake tins. Split, and spread with butter. Sweeten strawberries to taste, place on back of range until warmed, crush slightly, and put between and on top of Short Cakes; cover top with Cream Sauce I.
A stiff, cake-like fried dough cut into slashed rectangles and stretched open on the fingers before it hits the fat. The method depends on a frying temperature the original leaves to a cross-reference.
- Fat temperature"Fry same as Doughnuts I" sends you to a deep-fat method described elsewhere in the book rather than to a thermometer reading; in modern terms that is roughly 365-375F. Below that the dough drinks oil and stays heavy; above it the outside colors before the crumb sets. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash, and let it recover between batches.
- The hinge: handle the gashes gentlyThe four one-inch cuts are what turn a rectangle into a lattice. Slip your fingers in and out of the slits and let the dough stretch under its own weight, then lower it into the fat without pulling it wide, or the strands tear and the cruller closes back up.
- A firm dough, on purposeFour cups flour to one cup milk gives a dough much stiffer than cake batter. It should be rollable and only lightly floured on the board; extra flour makes the crullers dry and tough.
- Roll thinThe original gives no measure; something in the region of 1/4 inch suits it. These rise noticeably in the fat, and a thick sheet gives you a doughy center by the time the outside is brown.
- The powdered sugar and cinnamonListed among the ingredients but never mentioned in the method. Drain the crullers on paper, then dust while still warm so the coating clings; sugaring them hot and wet makes a paste.
- Baking powder3 1/2 teaspoons in 4 cups of flour is broadly in line with modern double-acting powder. Mix it with the flour and nutmeg as directed rather than adding it to the creamed mixture.
- Whipped whitesThe recipe adds the stiff whites to the creamed mixture before the flour and milk go in alternately. Fold them in with a light hand rather than beating them down.
- YieldThe original gives none; a batch this size, rolled thin and cut three inches by two, will run to several dozen pieces. Best the day they are fried; they stale quickly.