Crullers
4 tablespoons shortening 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 3 cups flour 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon salt 3 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 5/8 cup milk Cream shortening; add sugar gradually and beaten eggs; sift together flour, cinnamon, salt and baking powder; add one-half and mix well; add milk and remainder of dry ingredients to make soft dough. Roll out on floured board to about 1/2 inch thick and cut into strips about 4 inches long and 1/2 inch wide; roll in hands and twist each strip and bring ends together. Fry in deep hot fat. Drain and roll in powdered sugar.
A plain baking-powder cruller from a Royal Baking Powder promotional book, where the leavening is the point of the exercise. Almost everything here translates directly; the two things worth attention are the odd milk measure and the fat temperature the original never gives.
- 5/8 cup milkHalf a cup plus two tablespoons. Fractions in eighths of a cup turn up in older American recipes. Add it gradually — flour absorbency varies and you want a soft dough that still holds a shape when rolled.
- ShorteningFour tablespoons is a quarter cup. "Shortening" in American books of this kind meant lard or a hydrogenated vegetable shortening; butter works and gives better flavour, though the dough will be slightly firmer when cold.
- Frying temperature"Deep hot fat" means 365–375°F. Below that the crullers absorb grease and go heavy; above it the outside colours before the baking powder has finished lifting the centre. Fry a scrap first and cut it open to check.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to three cups of flour is one teaspoon per cup, a standard ratio. Modern double-acting powder may be stronger than some early formulas; if your crullers taste faintly metallic or bitter, drop to two and a half teaspoons next time.
- Handling the doughHalf an inch is thick for a twisted cruller and the strips will puff considerably. Chill the dough for 20–30 minutes before rolling if it feels sticky — soft dough is correct, but cold soft dough is far easier to twist.
- SugaringRoll in powdered sugar while the crullers are warm but no longer glistening with fat, or the sugar dissolves into a glaze. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the undersides stay crisp.
- YieldThe original gives no yield. They are at their best within a few hours; by the next day the crumb has firmed and they are better split and toasted.
Crullers reached American kitchens through Dutch settlement — the name is generally traced to Dutch krullen, to curl, describing the twist rather than any particular dough. For much of the nineteenth century they seem often to have been raised with yeast or with eggs beaten to a foam; what makes this version a product of its moment is the chemical leavening, and the fact that the book exists to sell it. Royal Baking Powder published cookbooks for decades as advertising, and a doughnut chapter was ideal for the purpose: quick doughs fried in minutes demonstrated the product's speed against the slower yeast methods a home cook's mother would have used.