Peanut Puffs - Perfect Tea Time Treats

These peanut puffs make great tea time treats. The puffs are made with a simple homemade pastry and filled with sweet peanut filling. With a light dredge of icing sugar on top, these puff snacks are simply irresistible.

The puffs were very easy to make and you can be prepare them pretty fast too. It took me about an hour to complete to make these yummy treats from start to end. So if you are looking for something quick to fix for teatime or snack food for the whole family, these puffs are definitely worth trying.

These peanut puffs are adapted from my homemade fried dough recipe. With the same dough recipe, instead of cutting and frying the dough and then coating it with sugar syrup, I choose to add simple homemade peanut filling between 2 pieces of pastry and fry them before dredging with powdered sugar.

The recipe below is also for a small batch. If you want to make more, simply double or triple the recipe measurement.

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How to Make the Puffs

Ingredients

Pastry

• All-purpose flour
• Margarine
• Water
• Oil for frying

Filling:

• Peanuts 
• Brown sugar

Coating:

• Icing sugar

Making the pastry

• Sift flour into a medium sized bowl.
• Add margarine into the bowl and rub the flour and margarine until the margarine is well combined and the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. If you are doing this by hand, mix with the tip of your fingers.
• Make a well in the center. Pour in the cold water in batches until the dough comes together into a soft ball. At this stage, the dough will not be smooth.
• Cover the dough and leave it to rest for approximately 10 minutes.
• Knead the dough until it becomes a smooth ball. You will notice that the dough can be kneaded smooth in just a few minutes after resting.

Making the filling

• To make the filling, dry roast the shelled peanuts. Remove the brown skin.
• Process the roasted peanut coarsely. You can do this in a food processor or by hand in a mortar and pestle.
• Transfer the peanuts into a bowl. Add the sugar and mix well.

Assembling the puffs

• To assemble the peanut puffs, divide the pastry dough into smaller sections. Work with one section at a time for easy handling. Roll the pastry thinly and then cut it into squares. The ones I have on this page were about 5cm squares.
• Each puff is made of 2 of these pastry squares. Add the filling into the center of one piece and cover it with the second piece.

• And then pinch the sides thoroughly to seal the filling so that no gap of unsealed pastry is left. It is important to note that the peanut-brown sugar filling might ooze out while frying if there are any gaps so the pinching process is really important.
• Also, do note that thinly rolled pastry will result in crispy peanut puffs while not so thinly rolled pastry will result in puffs that are crispy on the edges but soft on the inside.

Frying the puffs

• To fry the puffs, add oil into the wok and turn on the heat to medium.
• Once the oil is heated up, add the puffs and fry until golden brown. Turn the puffs over half way through frying so that both sides cook well.
• Transfer the puffs into a plate lined with kitchen towels to absorb excess oil.
• Place the puffs on a serving plate and dust them with icing sugar.

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Notes

Substitute for margarine

• The pastry is made with 3 ingredients: all-purpose flour, margarine (hydrogenated palm oil), and water.
• If you don’t want to use margarine, you can substitute it with other vegetable fat. Since margarine is salted, you need not add additional salt. So, if you are substituting margarine with other fat, you may need to add some salt when mixing the pastry. 

Peanut filling

• The peanuts were dry roasted on a pan on the stovetop until they were well cooked and crunchy. Once the peanuts were cool, ground them coarsely. I prefer the peanuts to be slightly chunky and so I only ground them very slightly. And then add brown sugar to the ground peanuts and the filling is ready. If you like them finer, you can grind them finer.

Icing sugar dredge

• The icing sugar dredge on the puffs is optional. You can omit this step if you wish so. The peanut puffs will taste just as good without the icing sugar.

Make and fry the puffs in batches

• Another thing to note is to assemble and fry these puffs in batches. This is especially so when you have a lot of puffs to make. I made mine in batches of 4 to 6.
• It's always better to do these in batches as the sugar in the peanut filling might start melting in the uncooked puffs after some time (after assembling) and that might result in the sugar oozing out of the puffs (even though the puffs have been well sealed) when frying.

Best oil for frying

• You can use any vegetable oil for frying the puffs. I used palm oil. Peanut oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, and coconut oil (in liquid form) will be good options for frying these treats too.

Storing the puffs

• These peanut puffs are best eaten fresh, on the day they are made. I often make them a few hours before serving. That way, the puffs have fresh crispiness to them. Keeping them overnight causes them to lose this crispiness and they tend to become a bit dry.
• You can, however, mix the pastry dough and make the filling in advance. The pastry can be made and refrigerated 2 or 3 days in advance. The filling, can be made up to one week in advance.

Like this recipe? Here are my other posts you might want to check out

• Simple Peanut Butter Cookies with Sprinkles
• Homemade Fried Dough Recipe - Dough Bites in Simple Syrup
• Ultimate Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake with Oreo Crust
• Peanut Butter Oreos - Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies
• Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Recipe (Printable)

Here is the full, printable version of my peanut puffs recipe:

And that's my peanut puffs recipe for you.

Enjoy 🙂