Banana Beignets

I really like the Disney movie, "The Princess and the Frog" and since I've never been to New Orleans, I had no idea what a Beignet was and they ate alot of them in the cartoon. This recipe was a winner of the Food Network magazine reader challenge. Each month they pick an ingredient and reader's send in their recipes to win a prize and last issue was for bananas. I wonder how many millions of banana bread recipes they got...
I read through the ingredients and saw that it was a fairly simple recipe and decided (with Charlie's encouraging) to give it a go this weekend.
I consider doughnuts to be a dessert, not a breakfast. I was sweetly surprised, however, that these were heavier than a traditional doughnut, yet not too light.
They reminded me of hot Malasadas we used to get from Leonard's Malasada truck in Laie, HI. while going to school. Everyone loved them; couldn't get enough of them. These were delicious and I'm happy to share the recipe.

Banana Beignets

Mix dry ingredients:

1 1/2 cups cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/3 cup granulated sugar (for the dough mix)

Wet Ingredients:

2 T Vegetable oil
1 large egg
1/2 cup whole milk (I only had 2% and it worked fine)
1/2 cup mashed over-ripe banana ( I ended up doubling the recipe and used 3 medium bananas)
1/4 tsp. banana extract ( I didn't have any, might have made it taste a little better, but still great without it)

You'll also need enough oil for frying and a frying thermometer as well as extra sugar (1/2 cup)and cinnamon (1 tsp) for rolling the fried beignets in. I went through the cinnamon/sugar mix a couple times, I may have rolled them a little thick in the sugar, but it tasted so good!

So here's the deal with frying. First of all you need to have the oil at 375F, which was tricky trying to work with a glass top stove. I heard the trick is to get it approx. ten degrees higher than what you need because it fluctuates so much. I really couldn't keep it at 375 for very long or very often.

Also, I burned myself several times before I finally figured out how to get the dough in the oil without plopping and spraying oil or making funnel cake. I used a regular cereal spoon and got about a heaping teaspoon and set the tip of the spoon right above the oil and it slid off without plopping and formed a decent ball. It worked really well.

Fry the beignets about 15 seconds on each side. Since the oil temp fluctuated so much, it was easier to watch for a dark coloring and then check with a toothpick after you've taken them out and placed on the paper towel lined plate.

Back to how to make the dough. It's super simple. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, and the wet into your mixer. Be sure to mash the banana before you actually put it into the mix because you don't want to over mix the dough and this will ensure that the banana is smashed completely.

Mix all together until just combined, be sure to scrape the sides and beneath. My KitchenAid just doesn't get the bottom of the bowl very well.

I also heated the oven to 200F so that I could keep the beignets warm while frying the rest. I did a double batch so it took forever.

Enjoy!