The next stop on my Arkansas Black Apple Express was apple fritters. While there may be a ton of recipes that appear wildly different, most fritter recipes show a fundamental underlying similarity. In simplest terms, an apple fritter is a fried sweet batter with apples – but this one approach can yield dissimilar results. Some people dip apple rings in pancake batter and deep fry them. The fritter I was looking for was something more akin to a bear claw.
Muffins and pancakes and quick breads and fritters all share a similar base: equal parts by weight of flour and liquid (usually milk) with about half that weight in eggs. Muffins and pancakes and quick breads usually include some added fat – fritters usually do not. The primary difference, though, in the fritters is that the eggs are usually separated and the whites whipped-up into soft peaks before incorporating them into the batter.
As far as how many apples to use in a given batch of fritters? I couldn’t really find a direct reference that addressed this – I made my batter starting with 10 oz. of all purpose flour and used three medium-sized apples – that worked out great for me.
I also had to make one additional modification to the basic ratios of components. Most fritters are small (like fritter-nuggets) and are made from a thinner batter (like the aforementioned pancake batter, sans added fat). Wanting to make a larger, fist-sized fritter, I reduced the liquid in my batter to about 80% of my flour weight to make sure the batter would hold its shape in the hot oil while the exterior crisped-up during frying.
My ingredient list looked like this (the percentages are Baker’s Percentages – given as a ratio of the total flour weight):
All Purpose Flour – 10 oz. – 100%
Liquid – 8 oz. – 80% (I used 5 oz. apple cider + 3 oz. buttermilk)
Sugar – 2.5 oz. – 25%
Eggs (Separated) – 3 large – 5.25 oz. – 52.5%
Salt – 1 tsp.
Baking Powder – 1 Tbsp.
Spice – 1 tsp. cinnamon + 1/4 tsp. nutmeg (I ground my own again)
I used more spice with this preparation than I did in my apple pie because it takes a little more spice to make its presence known in a batter than it does as a dressing for apples in a pie.
And before I get into the technique and results below, let me address the glaze I used. A glaze made from confectioners sugar is usually made in a ratio of 4:1, by weight, of confectioners sugar to liquid (usually milk). The glaze I made for my apple fritters was made from a 4:1 ratio, by weight, of confectioners sugar to apple cider with a dash of cinnamon thrown in for good measure. I used 8 oz. confectioners sugar and 2 oz. apple cider – I didn’t measure the cinnamon (probably less than 1/2 tsp.).
Enough background, let’s look at how the great fritter frying festivities turned out.
Prepare Your Apples (I used a total of 3)
Once again, I did my peeling, coring, and slicing mechanically. I used three apples total.
I then diced the slices into chunks that were between 1/2 and 3/4 inch thick.
To prevent browning, I soaked the apple chunks in cold water with a little lemon juice while I gathered my other ingredients.
But understand that the apples need to be as dry as possible when they go into the fritter batter.
Use paper towels to wick-away as much moisture from the apples as possible – you should do this right before you incorporate the apples into the batter.
Heat Your Oil to 350° F (I used 3 cups – a mixture of peanut and canola oils)
My stove is terribly inefficient – it took almost 25 minutes for the oil to come-up to temperature. I let the oil heat-up in the background while I prepared and mixed my fritter batter for frying. For the record, unless I have a compelling reason to go with some other frying temperature, I always shoot for an oil temperature of around 350° F. A temperature much less than that and fried foods absorb too much oil – much more than that and fried foods can burn on the outside before the inside has time to cook-through. Somewhere in the 345° F to 365° F range should work-out great.
Sometime today would be nice…
Prepare Your Other Ingredients
Dry ingredients go in one bowl – flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices.
Wet ingredients in a separate bowl – apple cider, buttermilk, and egg yolks (egg whites were separated-out to whip).
So this is the starting point – egg whites + dry ingredients + wet ingredients.
Whisk you dry ingredients briefly to combine – whisk your wet ingredients briefly to combine.
Now’s the time to dry your apples and have them at the ready.
Finally, beat the egg whites until they form soft glossy peaks. They should still look moist.
Mixing the Fritter Batter
Fritter batter is mixed just like quick breads and muffins and pancakes – dry and wet ingredients are folded together gently until the batter just comes together. I always have to keep my aggressive Taurus nature in-check here to avoid over mixing the batter. Over mixing will result in a dense, tough fritter.
Combine the wet ingredients with the dry.
Mix gently util the batter just barely comes together. Here, you can still see some wisps of the dry ingredients left in the batter – that is desirable and a good sign that it is time to stop mixing.
Add the apples and mix gently to incorporate. Less is more!
Here, the apples have been tossed-into the batter.
Add the whipped egg whites and proceed to fold them into the batter gently.
What this leaves is a fluffy apple-y batter.
Frying the Fritters
I used a #20 disher/scooper to transfer my batter to the hot oil.
Make sure there is plenty of room for the fritters to move freely in the oil.
Also be aware that the temperature of the oil will drop with the addition of the fritters. Adjust your stove as necessary to insure that the temperature climbs back up to the target temperature of about 350° F.
Once I could see the undersides were browning, I turned them to start the cooking of the other side.
Now, a few words about judging a frying fritter by its color: DON’T DO IT. Most of the recipes I consulted on fritters blithely stated how you could judge when a fritter was done by how much time it spent on each side in the hot oil. Once I thought my fritters had been frying for a LONG time and saw that they were a beautiful color, I decided to check their internal temperature. I found out they were practically raw in the center.
The fritters in this first batch were huge. HUGE. And with the kitchen smelling like fried dough and apples, I was more than anxious to snatch these fritters out of the oil. But my own sense of time and color for frying fritters was woefully inadequate. That’s why I love my digital instant read thermometer. I continued cooking the fritters until the centers registered a full 200° F.
This is what my fully-cooked fritters looked like. I didn’t remove them from the oil until the centers of ALL the fritters registered 200° F on my digital instant read thermometer.
Transferred to a rack for cooling – each of these fritters was only slightly smaller than my fist.
Before launching the second batch of fritters, I made sure that my cooking oil had returned fully to at least 350° F.
Second batch – this time, I used slightly smaller portions.
In addition to using smaller portions the second time around, I also tried to flatten the cooking batter by pressing-down on each fritter in the oil with the back of a spoon. My thought here was that the thinner fritters might cook more quickly. What I noticed, though, was that whatever thickness I managed to mash-out of the cooking fritters was pretty quickly recovered by the leavening at work in the hot batter.
Cook, as before, until all the fritters reach an internal temperature of 200° F.
Remove from the oil and cool on a rack.
Making the Glaze
Don’t make the glaze until the fritters are cooked – but be sure to glaze them before they are completely cool.
Remember the the basic confectioners sugar glaze ratio is 4 parts confectioners sugar to 1 part liquid – I used 8 oz. confectioners sugar to 2 oz. apple cider – with a dash of cinnamon.
8 oz. confectioners sugar with some cinnamon (sugar and spice) + 2 oz. (1/4 cup) apple cider.
Whisk to form a glaze – it will come together quickly.
Note the volume of the sugar before I added the apple cider versus the total volume of the glaze that formed. It takes a lot of confectioners sugar to generate a tiny amount of glaze. The 8 oz. of sugar I used (that’s nearly 2 cups) made just barely enough of a glaze to cover all my fritters.
Results
The fritters should feel light for their size, they should not feel dense or heavy.
Glazed and cooled.
Moist and airy interior.
Recent Comments