Fried Dough with Simple Syrup (Easy Fried Pastry Fritters)

Top view of a silver bowl of fried dough.

5 from 28 votes

Fried Dough with Simple Syrup (Easy Fried Pastry Fritters)

Fried dough recipe for absolutely delicious pastry bites coated in sugar syrup. With crispy edges and soft centers, these are simply irresistible!

Prep Time20

Cook Time30

Total Time50

Course: Snack

Cuisine: American

Servings: people

Calories: 378kcal

Author: Priya Maha

Ingredients

Dough

250 g all purpose flour
30 g butter (cold)
125 ml water (cold)

Simple Sugar Syrup

100 g white coarse sugar
100 ml water

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Sift flour into a medium-sized bowl.
Add butter and rub it into the flour with fingertips until the flour looks like breadcrumbs.
Make a well in the center. Pour the water, a little at a time and mix with a metal spoon. If the dough appears too dry, add more water. Turn the dough onto a clean surface and knead until it comes together as a dough. It need not be very smooth at this stage.
Let the dough rest for 5 minutes and then give in a light knead. It should be a lot smoother after the rest.
Pinch a handful of dough and roll it thin to about 2mm to 3mm.
Cut it vertically into long strips and then vertically into smaller, bite-sized squares.
Add oil into in deep fryer or a deep frying pan. Heat it up.
Test the oil by drop a small piece of dough into it. If the oil is well heated up, the dough piece will float to the top and will start bubbling on the sides immediately. If not, let it heat up a bit longer.
Deep fry the dough pieces until they turn light brown. Use a slotted spoon to turn them over halfway through so that they cook on both sides.
Remove from oil with a slotted spoon and strain in a kitchen towel. Continue with the rest of the dough.
To prepare the sugar syrup, place sugar in a large pan and add water. Cook until the sugar is dissolved and the sugar syrup thickens to a softball stage (about 112°Celsius on a candy thermometer).
Add the deep-fried dough all at once into the sugar syrup and mix until the dough bites are all well coated with the syrup. Mix gently to prevent the fried pastry from breaking too much.
Remove the sugar-coated dough bites into a serving plate and serve. The fried dough is best served within 4 to 5 hours after frying.

Notes

For best results, butter should be cold but not too hard. Too hard a butter will make it hard to mix it into the flour.

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. 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 the bites in syrup, it is best to leave the heat on the stove on at a very small flame. That way, they sugar does not hardened. If the sugar starts to harden, your dough bites will start sticking to the pan.

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