Churros with Dark Chocolate Dip
Crisp, cinnamon-sugared and made for dunking
Crisp and ridged on the outside, soft within, these churros are tossed warm in cinnamon sugar so it clings to every crevice. The twist is the dip: not a thin drinking chocolate but a thick, glossy ganache made with dark chocolate and cream, deep enough to coat each piece generously. Piped straight into hot oil and fried until deep gold, they are best eaten within minutes, perched at the kitchen counter with the chocolate still warm.
Churros with Dark Chocolate Dip
Ingredients
- 250ml water
- 60g unsalted butter
- 1 tbsp caster sugar
- A pinch of salt
- 150g plain flour
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1 litre sunflower oil, for frying
- 100g caster sugar, for rolling
- 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
- 150g dark chocolate (70%), chopped
- 150ml double cream
- 1 tbsp golden syrup
Method
- Bring the water, butter, tablespoon of sugar and salt to a gentle boil in a saucepan.
- Tip in the flour all at once and beat hard with a wooden spoon until the dough comes away from the sides in a smooth ball.
- Cool for 5 minutes, then beat in the eggs a little at a time until you have a thick, glossy, pipeable dough.
- Spoon the dough into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle.
- Mix the rolling sugar with the cinnamon on a plate and set aside.
- Heat the oil to 180C in a deep pan.
- Pipe 12cm lengths of dough straight into the oil, snipping with scissors, and fry 3-4 at a time for 3-4 minutes until deep golden.
- Drain on kitchen paper, then roll the warm churros in the cinnamon sugar.
- For the dip, heat the cream and golden syrup until steaming, then pour over the chopped chocolate.
- Leave for a minute, then stir until smooth and glossy.
- Serve the churros warm with the dark chocolate dip alongside.
3 The Story
Churros are among the most beloved of Spanish street foods, sold from dedicated stalls and cafes known as churrerias and traditionally eaten for breakfast or as a late-night treat after an evening out. Their defining feature is the ridged, star-shaped cross-section, formed by piping the dough through a fluted nozzle. Those ridges are not merely decorative: they increase the surface area, giving the churro more crisp edges and more places for sugar to cling, which is part of why the texture is so satisfying.
The dough itself is a simple flour-and-water paste, in some versions enriched with egg, cooked briefly on the stove before being piped and fried. This technique, where flour is beaten into hot liquid to form a thick paste, is the same one behind French choux pastry, and it gives the churro its characteristic structure: a sturdy, hollow-ish interior that crisps readily in hot oil. Getting the oil temperature right is the single most important step. Too cool and the churros drink up oil and turn greasy; too hot and they brown before the inside has cooked through.
The pairing of churros with chocolate is firmly rooted in Spanish tradition, where a cup of thick, almost pudding-like drinking chocolate is the classic accompaniment for dipping. That chocolate is typically thickened so it coats the churro rather than running off it. The twist in this recipe takes the same impulse a step further, swapping the drinking chocolate for a proper ganache of dark chocolate and cream. The result is richer and more intense, with the bitterness of a good 70% chocolate balancing the sweetness of the cinnamon sugar.
There is some debate over the origins of the churro, with one popular account crediting Spanish shepherds who fried the dough over open fires in the mountains, where fresh bread was hard to come by. Whatever its true beginnings, the form spread widely through the Spanish-speaking world, taking on local variations along the way, from the thicker porras of Spain to the filled churros of Latin America. This version keeps things classic in spirit while letting the chocolate do something a little more indulgent.
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