Italian Pastry Twists

I'm just going to come out now and say that this recipe was obnoxious. I'm not sure where things went wrong, but they went wrong quickly and I couldn't seem to get control back!

First of all, how can you screw up fried dough? Everyone loves it... it's immensely bad for you so how could you not love a funnel cake engulfed in powdered sugar? Oreos engulfed in dough. Ugh. However, these examples are not the way this story goes.

My dough ended up being so thick that I thought I somehow doubled the amount of flour it called for, but even after doubling the wet ingredients it was still too thick! Plus I had double and triple checked how much I was supposed to put in. WHAT HAPPENED!? Well maybe I really did just screw it up and wasn't paying attention. Try out the recipe and let me know! This really is minimal effort and you fry the dough so it literally just takes a few minutes. This recipe comes from The Ultimate Cookie Book by Catherine Atkinson. Me mum acquired it when we lived in the UK for a spell.

Italian Pastry Twists

Yield: a hell of a lot more than I got out of it, which was about 8 pieces
Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 egg
pinch of salt
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp melted butter
4 tbsp sherry oil for frying (I used Crisco)
confectioners sugar for dusting

Instructions
1. Sift flour into large mixing bowl and make a well in the center. Add the egg, salt, sugar, vanilla extract and melted butter.
2. Mix with hands until the mixture starts to come together. When the dough becomes stiff add enough oil to make the dough soft and pliable. Knead until smooth and then wrap in plastic wrap and chill for about an hour.
3. Roll out the pastry thinly on a lightly floured surface and cut into 40 strips each about 7x1/2". Tie each strip loosely into knot.
4. Heat oil in pan to 375°F and deep fry the knots in batches, for 2-3 minutes until puffed up and golden.
5. Drain the pastry twists on a paper towel, dust generously with powdered sugar and serve either hot or cold.

This was as close as I could come to getting the dough rolled out thinly! Then it took a lot of manipulation to get it to do what I wanted with the knot.

And there you have it. It's going to take me a little while before I'm recovered from the trauma of this so that I may try once again to fry up some Italian Twists. Let me know if those measurements work out for you, or may try just adding in the flour to the wet ingredients until you have something workable and let me know how much flour it took!

These actually were still pretty tasty, although pretty thick. Of course, anything sprinkled with powdered sugar at the very least tastes better.

Good luck and enjoy!