CDKitchen 100: Recipe 3

Sorry for the gap in posts, but I HAVE been working on the recipes; just not uploading them. Bad me, I know. But I come bearing gifts! Lots of blueberry gifts!

I went to the local Farmer's Market and picked up a bunch of these little blue suckers for a nifty little price. I've been meaning to tackle blueberries for a while now, especially since they're not my favorite little berry (strawberry's got that title). I figure this challenge would be just the thing to give them a second chance.

I just hope I don't end up like Violet Beauregarde there. Gulp.

Blueberry Fritters

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons of confectioner's sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 milk
• 2 eggs (separated, not divorced)
  
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

In one bowl, pour in all the dry ingredients.

Mix them all together.

Now after all that hard work, let's just forget about it and move on. We had our fun with it.

Time to separate the eggs.

The kids were never the same afterwards.

Be careful to save the yolk and beat the whites lightly in one bowl, like so:

In another bowl, put the yolks in and stiffly beat it to show how to take it like a real man, er, egg:

Yolk's on you - ha ha ha. ...Get it?

Going back to the soon-to-be-wet ingredients, take the bowl and make a sort of "well" or "indentation" in the dry mix and pour all the milk in.

Drowning microbes since 1988.

Add the whites and mix:

BUT LO! THERE'S MORE!

Here's where I made one of my boo-boos. Instead of putting in the blueberries first, I put the egg yolks in:

AND THEN I MIXED! OH NOES!

Well, it doesn't look too bad.

Ick.

Okay, NOW I put in the blueberries (I am ruining this recipe.)

Mix it around.

Let's get a close-up of that.

OH MY GOD, THAT DOESN'T LOOK GOOD. ...Those blueberries look sort of like chocolate chips to me. Hmmm.

Alright, we've done all we can. Now we let it chill for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, get the rack ready, ladies...

....Uh...

THIS SORT OF RACK, I MEAN

Don't forget paper towels, y'all.

And the oil! In the saucepan!

Heat it up, nice and hot.

Now here was my problem... on the original recipe, it says to take two spots and make a sort of "ball" for the fritter and then dip it in the oil to cook. I tried that and it was surprisingly difficult. But I managed to get through it. This is what I hate about fried foods though... I can never tell if they're cooked enough on the INSIDE or not.

So I always manage to burn them (I've learned to love this taste; others can't.) Someone once said you have to listen for a distinct crackle/popping sound... and me? Well, I've pretty much destroyed my hearing with my iPod.

Oh well.

Voila! Fini!

It looks...

It looks... burnt. And not appetizing. At all.

Yeah, you said it, Simba.

Oh boy.

But biting into it, it's not terrible, especially if you coat the thing in powdered sugar. Like really, really coat it.

So what do I think of this recipe? Not a favorite, for sure -- I may have done a few things wrong such as:

• My cousin's chef friend said that I was supposed to use peanut oil instead of regular corn oil. It gives it a better taste. Also, there's supposed to be enough oil to completely immerse the fritters in. I was rather stingy and only filled it in halfway.
• I didn't know how to "fold", and silly me, didn't look it up before I tried to "fold" on my own. My stirring probably made the batter heavier than it needed to be.
• I left a few of them (okay, most of them) in the oil too long and probably made it more "burnt"/brown than they needed to be.

However, my better half says that they came out rather tasty; for me, however, they tore the roof of my mouth. Literally. Couldn't eat for a few days without wincing.

Do it again? Maybe, in some distant future when I'll forget why "fritters" strikes fear into my heart.

Find the recipe @ CDKitchen (Blueberry Fritters).

Stay tuned for blueberry muffins next!