Fried Dough with Simple Syrup (Easy Fried Pastry Fritters)

❤️Why you will love this recipe

• This is an easy recipe with 3 very simple ingredients, all of which are pantry staples.
• The dough bites can be made fairly quickly and the steps are easy.
• These dough bites are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, and coupled with the sweet syrup on the outside, these treats are simply irresistible.

Like these easy recipe? Here are my other posts you might want to check out:

• Thick and Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies (Bite-Sized)
• Old Fashioned Homemade Yeast Doughnuts
• Peanut Puffs (Perfect Tea Time Treats)
• Easy Yeast Rolls for Beginners
• Brioche Donuts (Soft and Fluffy)
• Coffee Rolls with Coffee Cream Cheese Glaze

This quick and easy homemade fried dough recipe makes sweet, deep fried dough with just 3 basic ingredients. All you need are:

Dough

• All purpose flour - best sifted before using.
• Cold butter - I use salted butter in the recipe above. If you are using unsalted butter, add ⅛ teaspoon of fine salt into the flour. Butter should be firm but soft.
• Water - water should be cold. Avoid using warm water as it can melt the butter and make your dough greasy.
• Oil - for frying. Any odorless vegetable oil like canola or sunflower oil will work.

Sugar syrup

• White sugar - sugar will be dissolved in water to make the syrup, hence can be coarse. Granulated sugar will also work fine.
• Water - use filtered water.

🧾Substitution and Variations

• You can replace the butter with margarine, the results will be the same. Since margarine has salted, extra salt is not required.
• The sugar syrup can be flavored with 1 teaspoon of orange and lemon zest for light citrus-flavored treats. You can also add a quarter to half a teaspoon of cinnamon powder to the syrup for cinnamon flavored deep fried dough bites.
• Instead of sugar syrup as indicated in the recipe, these dough bites can also be enjoyed with a coat of powdered sugar. Once the bites have cooled down slightly, toss them in powdered sugar (icing sugar) and serve. You can also flavor the powdered sugar by adding a quarter to half teaspoon of cinnamon powder to make it cinnamon sugar before coating the fried dough.

Mixing the dough

1. To make the dough, start by sifting your flour into a medium-sized or large mixing bowl and add butter to it. For easy mixing, cut the butter into small cubes. Butter should be cold and firm, but soft enough to poke a finger in.
2. Use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour. You can also use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour too. At the end of this process, your mixture should look like breadcrumbs. 
3. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Pour half of the water in, and use a metal spoon to bring the dough together and then use your hands to incorporate sufficient flour to form a soft ball. You need not use up all the flour at this stage. Put the dough ball aside.
4. Add more water to the remaining flour and repeat to mix to form a soft ball until all the flour is used up. Combine with the earlier dough and knead the balls together. If the dough appears too dry, add a bit more water.
5. Knead the dough for a minute or two. At this stage, it will not be very smooth, and that is fine.
6. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes (cover the bowl with kitchen towel or wrap the dough in plastic wrap) and give it a few rounds of kneading (just a few seconds) after that. You will notice that it is a lot smoother at this stage.

Rolling, cutting and frying

1. Pinch a handful size of dough and roll it out thin on your work surface with a rolling pin. The dough can be a little stretchy as you roll it, so keep rolling by lifting and turning the rolled dough until it is really thin (about 2mm to 3mm thick). There is no need to work on lightly floured surface as the dough will not be sticky.
2. Cut the dough vertically, and then horizontally into small equal sized pieces. 
3. Heat up oil in a large frying pan or a deep fryer. Deep fry the pieces of dough on medium heat until each piece of dough turns golden brown. Turn the pieces over with a slotted spoon halfway through to allow them to cook on both sides.
4. Remove from the hot oil (with a slotted spoon so that the oil gets drained as you lift the dough) and strain on a paper towel-lined plate or a large bowl. Repeat until the dough is all fried. 

Making the simple sugar syrup

1. To make the simple sugar syrup, add sugar and water into a large pan. Make sure the pan is large enough to fit all the fried dough and there is enough room to toss them in. If not, divide the dough and the syrup into 2 batches. Turn on the heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. 
2. Let the sugar simmer until it thickens to a softball stage. You can continue to stir with a metal spoon every now and then. To test the softball stage, drop a few drops of the sugar in a shallow bowl of water. if the sugar holds its shape and dissolves as you move it with your fingers, it is done. You can also use a candy thermometer to test. The temperature of the syrup should be about 112°Celsius on a candy thermometer
3. Turn the heat to a very low flame and add all the fried dough pieces into the syrup. Mix them with a large spoon gently by pushing the spoon to the bottom of the pan and lifting and tossing the dough pieces as you lift the spoon up.
4. The fried dough pieces are all puffy and crispy on the edges, mixing them hard will break these, so toss them gently. Once all the fried dough pieces are well coated with the syrup, turn off the heat and transfer them to a serving plate.

🍽️Serving & storage

• This fried dough is best eaten on the day it is fried, within 4 to 5 hours. Enjoy these treats with your favorite beverage.

💡Expert Tips

• For best results, butter should be cold but not too hard. If should be sufficiently soft for you to poke your finger in. Too hard a butter will make it hard to mix it into the flour. Cut the butter into small cubes.
• When adding water to the flour, do it in stages. This is to avoid the dough from becoming too sticky. The water mentioned in the recipe above has been tested to be just sufficient to form a soft and pliable dough but it is always a good practice to add water in small increments when mixing dough. 
• This dough can be a bit stretchy when rolling. The best way to roll it is to do it in small portions. Lift and turn the dough over as you roll it until you reach the desired thickness. Because of the butter in the dough, it should not stick as you roll it. If you find it too soft to roll, knead in a bit more flour. 
• These dough bites are at their best when the dough is rolled thin (about 2mm to 3mm thickness). Too thick a dough will require longer frying time which can cause your dough pieces to brown too much on the outside but undercooked on the inside.
• When frying the dough, make sure the oil is well heated up (but not overly heated as that can burn your dough very quickly without cooking the insides properly). This will prevent the dough pieces from absorbing too much oil. Test the oil temperature by adding a tiny pinch of the dough into the oil. The oil is well heated if the dough piece starts bubbling on the sides as soon as it is added into the oil.
• When mixing the fried dough in the syrup, be sure to use a large pan. It is a lot easier to mix in a large pan then in a small pan. If you do not have a large pan, mix the bites in batches, which means you would need to make the syrup in batches too.
• Also, when mixing the pastry bites in syrup, it is best to leave the heat on the stove on at a very small flame. That way, they syrup stays liquid. If the sugar starts to harden, your dough bites will start sticking to the pan.

💭FAQs