Loukoumades

Name: Loukoumades
Cook time: 104 min
Total time: 104 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Greek
Ingredients: 300 g Wheat flour; 60 g Walnuts; 2 tablespoons Sesame seeds; 1 pinch Salt; 100 g Sugar; 1 l Sunflower Oil; 1 tablespoon Lemon Juice; 1 teaspoon Cinnamon; 1 u Cinnamon Stick; 200 g Honey; 7 g Yeast; 430 ml Water

Medium

Contains allergens

Cereales con glutenFrutos de cáscaraSésamo

Author: Equipo Cocinoa
Preparation time: 104 min
Servings: 6

Summary

Greek yeasted fritters, fried by the spoonful until golden and airy, then bathed in honey and cinnamon syrup and topped with walnuts and sesame. Best eaten straight away.

Ingredients

6 servings

Add to Bring!

300 g Wheat flour
60 g Walnuts (chopped)
2 tablespoons Sesame seeds
1 pinch Salt
100 g Sugar (1 teaspoon for the batter and the rest for the syrup)
1 l Sunflower Oil (for deep-frying)
1 tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 teaspoon Cinnamon (ground, for dusting)
1 u Cinnamon Stick
200 g Honey (thyme or wildflower)
7 g Yeast (dried (one sachet), or 20 g fresh yeast)
430 ml Water (280 ml lukewarm for the batter and 150 ml for the syrup)

Instructions

Dissolve the yeast and the teaspoon of sugar in the 280 ml of lukewarm water (about 35 °C, like the skin of your wrist). In a large bowl, mix the flour with the salt, pour in the yeasted water and beat with a wooden spoon or your hand for about 4 minutes, until you have a smooth, very sticky, stretchy batter, thicker than pancake batter.
5 min
Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave the batter to rise somewhere warm until doubled in size and full of bubbles.
60 min
Meanwhile, make the syrup: put the rest of the sugar, the 150 ml of water, the honey and the cinnamon stick in a pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, add the lemon juice and leave it to cool until warm.
8 min
Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan, stirring, until golden, and chop the walnuts.
3 min
Heat the oil in a deep pan to 170-175 °C. Without stirring the batter, scoop out walnut-sized pieces with a teaspoon dipped in water and push them into the oil with a second teaspoon. Fry in batches without crowding the pan, turning them, until golden all over, about 3 or 4 minutes. Drain on kitchen paper.
25 min
Pile the hot fritters on a plate, pour over the warm syrup and sprinkle with the ground cinnamon, walnuts and sesame. Serve at once.
3 min

Notes

Loukoumades are the classic fairground and street-stall sweet of Greece and Cyprus, and belong to a family of yeasted fritters found all around the eastern Mediterranean, such as Turkish lokma and Lebanese awameh. The batter should be too soft to knead: it is almost a thick, stretchy cream. The trick for shaping them is to dip the spoon in water (or oil) between each one so the batter slides off on its own; to do it the Greek way, take some batter in your hand, squeeze so that a ball pops up between your thumb and index finger and cut it off with the spoon. Watch the oil temperature: too hot and they brown outside while staying raw inside; too cool and they soak up oil. To keep them crisp, pour the syrup over just before serving rather than leaving them to soak. Leftovers can be revived for 5 minutes in the oven at 180 °C before adding the syrup. Without the walnuts they are suitable for anyone avoiding tree nuts; they are also served with melted chocolate or ice cream.