food comas

When I visited New Orleans for the first time, I brought back a delicious souvenir — beignet mix from Cafe Du Monde! The Original Cafe Du Monde Coffee Stand was established in 1862 in the New Orleans French Market. It is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When my friends and I went there during the day the line was so long, so we decided to come back later after a night out.

Today, beignets are square pieces of dough, fried and covered in powdered sugar. This was my first attempt at making the beignets — some did not puff up the way they should have. I recently found some better directions online at ABC news. next time i’ll try this:

Cafe Du Monde Beignets

In a bowl, combine two cups of Cafe Du Monde beignet mix with 7 ounces of water. You may have to add a little more or a little less water to achieve a good beignet mix dough, and you may have to make more than one batch to get the hang of it. Mix the ingredients with a spoon until the beignet mix is all mixed with the water. The dough should be relatively soft, like drop biscuit dough. It should not be stiff like pie dough. Do not overmix the dough. You will have tough beignets if you overmix the dough.

Scoop the mix from the bowl onto a well-floured surface. You will need additional flour to roll the dough flat. Roll the beignet dough flat and cut into 2-inch squares using a pizza cutter. From around the edges, you will have scraps of dough left over. Do not try to remix these scraps and cut them into squares. If you do this, you will get tough beignets. Just fry these pieces just the way they are.

Your cooking oil should be at 370° Fahrenheit. We use cottonseed oil at the Cafe Du Monde, and we recommend you use cottonseed oil. However, you may use any vegetable oil you wish. Remember that the temperature of the oil will drop when you add the beignet dough to the oil. Do not add too many pieces to the oil or else the oil temperature will drop and your beignets will fry up flat. They will not puff up. The only other reason the dough does not puff up would be if you rolled the beignet dough too flat. Try rolling the dough a little thicker.

The Cafe Du Monde beignets are traditionally served in orders of three, covered liberally with powdered sugar.

Note: If your beignets fail to puff up and remain flat, this is an indication the frying oil temperature is too low to properly cook the dough. Try using smaller pieces of dough and let the fryer come back to temperature before cooking another batch.