A Tiny Taste of Peru (a guest post by Lynae Rockwell)

Before I write anything I'd just like to explain why this post says that it is by Larry Rockwell. That's my dad's name. He was signed into his google account when I clicked on the link to do a guest post for horsefeathers so it is under his name. My name's Lynae Rockwell, and I will be the one posting today.

Have you ever had a doughnut? That's probably a silly question. A better question might be... have you ever had a churro? I am a missionary kid living in Huaraz, Peru and churros are a doughnut-like pastry that is eaten here a lot. They are extremely fattening, and are basically sticks of fried dough filled with a caramel-y like substance (they are also dipped in chocolate sometimes). In this blog post, I will be sharing a recipe of how to make churros so you can enjoy a little bit of Peruvian culture right at home. I found this recipe online (courtesy of about.com) but this is the second recipe I tried because I wanted to make sure that they tasted like real Peruvian churros. I made this recipe twice and the second time around, everyone agreed that they tasted like churros you'd find here in Peru. Enjoy!


The Ingredients you'll need are as follows:

1/2 cup of water
1/2 cup of buttermilk
1/2 cup of butter
pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of vanilla
3 large eggs
vegetable oil for frying
1/2 cup of sugar plus 1 tablespoon
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
Manjar, Nutella, or chocolate to dip them in


Put the buttermilk, water, butter, salt and 1 tablespoon of sugar in a pot and bring the mix to a boil...

Stir in the flour all at once using a heat-proof spatula (I just used a wooden spoon. Keep stirring until it clumps together and forms a ball. Cook it for a minute or two more, turning the dough over in the pot with the spoon/spatula. Remove from heat.

Add the vanilla.

Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each(just a little tip here - when i made this recipe the first time I used a spoon to mix everything... DON'T do that. Use an electric mixer). After you mix the first egg in your dough should look something like this...

The dough should be shiny looking, but still sticky enough that it doesn't slide around on your spoon/spatula. By the third egg your dough should look like this...

After you're done mixing in the eggs, put the dough in a pastry bag fitted with a star tip that has an opening at least 1/2 inch wide. I didn't use a star tip for mine, in fact i just put it in a pastry bag without a tip on it and hoped for the best. I would advise using a star shaped pastry tip if you have one.

Start heating up your vegetable oil.

While you wait for the oil to heat up, mix the 1/2 cup of sugar and cinnamon together and put the mixture on a plate or in a pan so it will be ready to roll the churros in.

Once the oil is heated, pipe dough into the pan, making the churros about 4-6 inches long. fry them for about 2 minutes on each side until they're golden brown.

Let them cool on a plate lined with paper towels...

While the churros are still warm, roll them in cinnamon in sugar.

If desired, you can also dip churros in dulce de leche or nutella. Normally churros are filled with something called manjar (which is very similar to dulce de leche) or chocolate but filling churros can be a little tricky so I just dipped mine in manjar...

Enjoy your churros!!

OK, so now that you have made some Peruvian food and hopefully enjoyed it, here are a couple of songs that are pretty popular here that you can listen to while you eat your churros. These artists are not necessarily from Peru, but their music is listened to alot where I live. A style of music called reggaeton is very popular here.


This first song is pretty catchy (a little too catchy actually... I found myself humming the tune to this long after I had finished listening to it). It is called Danza Kuduro...




This song is by a band called Camila that actually is from Mexico but is popular here. It is called Alejate de Mi (the music video is a little weird just so you know) ....





Well, I hope you enjoyed your churros and the music. Both of those songs should be available on iTunes. Thanks for reading and I apologize for being so late to post this!! Hasta Luego!

-Lynae Rockwell


PS I also have a blog of my own called One Summer that I haven't been posting on very often (but hope to start posting again soon) which you can find here -

http://lynaerockwell-onesummer.blogspot.com/

Also I have a flickr account which you can find by going here -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60095568@N02/