Dough Bells

In many cultures people seem to enjoy versions of fried dough. It comes in many shapes and forms: North Americans love their doughnuts, Mexicans and Spaniards enjoy their churros, the Polish their paczki, the Italians their fritelle, and South Africans their koeksisters. In Germany, we like several varieties of these delicious treats made from fried dough. Berliner are similar to the Polish paczki. They are the size of American doughnuts but don’t have a hole in the middle. Instead, they are filled with different types of jam such as strawberry jam or plum butter. They are finished off with a simple glaze or coat of sugar. Every German bakery sells Berliner (or Krapfen as they are called in Southern Germany and Austria). So people hardly ever make them at home these days. (But if you ever go to Germany in February during carnival season beware! - bakeries fill one in the batch with mustard to prank their customers.)

Another treat most German bakeries sell for the less hungry are smaller versions of fried dough balls called Quarkbaellchen. Long word – I know – but that is something else Germans are known for!) To give them a bit of freshness the dough is made with Quark – a type of cream cheese that is used in many other German treats like cheesecake. Quark has less fat than cream cheese and its consistency is closer to that of Greek yogurt. In this recipe, we have replaced Quark with Greek yogurt which works just as well in making the dough light and airy. Together with the lemon zest it creates a nice freshness to balance out the crispy outside of this treat. Because the German word is too long to remember we called these small addictive treats ‘Dough Bells’.

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Recipe

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Ingredients:

400g all-purpose flour

500g Greek yogurt

250g sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

4 tsp baking powder

1 lemon (zest)

1 vanilla bean pod

1 pack of vanilla sugar (optional)

To fry:

3 cups good vegetable oil

1 cup butter (optional)

To coat:

150 g sugar

Cinnamon (optional)

Instructions:

1) Sift the flour and the baking powder and set aside. Cut the vanilla bean pod open and scrape out the vanilla. Add this to the sugar.

2) Beat the eggs using an electric whisk and slowly incorporate the sugar. If you use vanilla sugar also mix in with the eggs and sugar. Once the sugar is incorporated whisk at the highest setting for 3 minutes.

3) Add the Greek yogurt and the salt and whisk on a high setting for another minute.

4) Now incorporate all the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, lemon zest) by slowly whisking them into the egg-yogurt mixture. This creates a dough mixture.

5) In a pan, heat the oil and butter to 340 degrees Fahrenheit. We like to use a wok for this part because the shape is ideal for deep frying larger quantities without using even more oil. The butter gives the dough bells a better taste but can also burn. Therefore, skim the foamy parts on the surface off before putting the balls of dough into the oil to deep-fry.

6) Once the mixture of oil and butter (or just the oil) has reached 340 degrees, take two teaspoons of the dough mixture to create the dough bells. Put them into the oil and fry until golden brown. This usually takes about 3-4 minutes. The dough bells often turn themselves but if they don’t, you should turn them with a pair of tongs so they can fry on all sides.

7) When golden brown, remove dough bells from the oil and let them cool down. Use two layers of the paper towel to absorb some of the oil.

8) Mix sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and coat the dough bells with the cinnamon sugar. If you are not a fan of cinnamon you can also coat them in plain sugar.

We hope you enjoy these as much as we do! This recipe makes about 40 dough bells. That sounds like a lot - but they never last long at our house!