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Now you can enjoy New Orleans-Style Beignets without leaving the comfort of your home! If you’ve never enjoyed these soft and pillowy fried doughnuts before, you’re in for a treat. Because this is the best fried beignet recipe! Serve beignets warm, with plenty of powdered sugar!
Copycat Café du Monde Beignets
We’re heading to New Orleans for vacation today and I couldn’t be more excited to chill out in the big easy! Give me all the fried dough, boozy iced coffees, and gumbo, please and thank you!
But before we head to the airport, I’m popping in to share my favorite deep fried beignets recipe with you. Aka copycat Café du Monde beignets, which are the best in New Orleans.
They fry up crispy, chewy, and golden brown! And you serve the beignets warm, covered in powdered sugar, with piping hot coffee. Sweet enough to be dessert but we love making these for breakfast or brunch!
What is a Beignet?
To put it simply, beignets are square shaped pieces of dough that are deep fried and generously sprinkled with confectioners sugar.
- Leftovers taste ok at room temperature, but they don’t hold up well over time.
- The word beignet is French, and translates to fried dough or fritter.
- Unlike traditional doughnuts, they have a unique square shape.
- Texture wise, they’re crispy on the outside, with an airy pillowy soft interior.
- When it comes to taste, they’re not overly sweet. Which is why they’re served covered in lots and lots of powdered sugar.
- Best served hot, with a cafe au lait or cup of coffee.
- You’ll need a deep fry thermometer for this recipe. Because if your hot oil temperature is off, your fried dough will be too. This is the candy thermometer I use, and I love it. It costs me less than 10 bucks, and I’ve probably used it over a hundred times!
- To proof the yeast mixture, your warm water should be between 110 and 115 degrees (F). If the water is too hot, it will kill the yeast cells, and if it’s too cold, the yeast will remain dormant and the dough won’t rise.
- This recipe requires bread flour. Bread flour is a high-gluten flour that has a tiny amount of barley flour and vitamin C added. The barley flour helps the yeast activate. The vitamin C increases the elasticity of the gluten and its ability to retain gas as the dough rises.
- The dough will double in size as it rests. Refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours so it has time to properly develop.
- Fry the dough working in batches. If you crowd the oil, the beignets won’t get crispy or golden brown.
How to Serve Beignets
- As soon as you see the fried dough has achieved a golden brown color, remove them from the oil.
- Transfer them to a paper towel lined baking sheet to absorb some of the oil.
- Once cool enough to handle, transfer them to a large platter.
- Cover with powdered sugar and serve beignets warm!
As mentioned a few times earlier, I don’t suggest saving these for a future use. They get soggy after a few hours. So they’re best eaten right after making!
More Beignet Recipes:
If you can’t make it to New Orleans this year to enjoy cripsy golden brown fried dough… give it a try at home! Full step-by-step recipe video in the recipe card below!
New Orleans-Style Beignets
Ingredients
- 1 and 1/2 cups warm water, between 110 and 115 degrees (F)
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- 2 and 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 cup evaporated milk
- 2 and 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 7 cups bread flour
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 4 cups peanut oil, for deep frying
- 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
Instructions
- In a medium-size bowl, add the warm water, sugar, and yeast and whisk well to combine. Sit aside for about 10 minutes, or until the mixture has bubbled up and become foamy.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs until smooth. Beat in the vanilla and evaporated milk. Beat in 3 and 1/2 cups of the flour until smooth. Turn the mixer to low speed and slowly pour in the yeast mixture (careful here – this mixture can splash up if added to quickly!); beat until smooth. Add in the butter and beat until incorporated. Finally, beat in the remaining 3 and 1/2 cups of flour and salt. Beat until dough is smooth and cohesive; about 2 minutes. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or up to 24 hours.
- Line a large rimmed baking sheet with three layers of paper towels, set aside.
- In a large enameled cast-iron pan, heat 4-inches of oil to 360 degrees (F). Remove the dough from the refrigerator. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out into a 1/4-inch thick rectangle. Cut the dough into 2 and 1/2-inch squares.
- In batches, fry the dough until they puff up and are golden brown in color, about 1 minute. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the beignets to the prepared baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.
- Dust with powdered sugar and serve at once!
They turned out great
, thanks!
These are delicious. They are not beignets, though. They are like a very good raised doughnut, pillowy and good-flavored. Beignets are denser and less highly flavored.
This recipe is too much tasty and yummy and so keep sharing this kind of recipes with us thanks!
These are ravenously good!! Fluffy inside, slightly crisp on the outside, and ever so slightly keeps that “doughiness” as you chew despite being thoroughly cooked. I made a half-batch, very loosely following the recipe, and even when super rushed, they came out SO good. So I’d call these foolproof! It is a fairly large batch size, though! The half batch comes out basically being a full batch itself.
Some substitutions I had to make that I think may have worked in my favor:
1. I didn’t have enough softened butter, so I used mostly shortening with what little butter I did have.
2. didn’t have time to cold-proof. proofed in a fairly warm room for about half the time.
3. didn’t have evaporated milk, used buttermilk. (I think the buttermilk actually gave it some of the flavor depth I know I was missing from a shorter proof time).
4. didn’t have enough of the right oil, added a little coconut and olive oil to stretch out the amount.
These are delicious!! Love that the dough can be made the night before. Makes for easy roll and fry in the morning. Makes a decent size batch that we shared with neighbors and friends!
Trying this tomorrow morning. Just curious if I can freeze the unused dough for later?
Made this yesterday to go with the Cajun boil my wife was making, and they turned out fantastic! I would likely go with less packed bread flour to lighten them up, but otherwise they were perfect!
Just made this as a summer project with my 16 year old – the whole family loved it! We will be making this one part of our normal treat rotation!
I think this recipe would have turned out well except I don’t see where the salt should have been added. Did I miss it? I read it five times. I hope I just missed it, otherwise you should probably correct it.
HI! I almost missed it too but its step 2 when youre adding the remaining 3 1/2 cups of flour.
How can I fix if it’s still kind of liquidy after sitting in the fridge for 24 hrs?