Baked Churros- Finger licking Good or Not Worth It?

I’m super excited to make these baked churros! Churros are probably one of my favorite desserts! I love that I found a recipe to mix it up and use the air fryer. I have a feeling baked churros may not taste as good as fried churros. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get that crispy outside with a soft inside. They say you can get this result by chilling the batter first. Hopefully it also works with baking and not just frying. Let’s see how these baked churros turn out!

Season 7, episode 4 – Batter Week has bakers making churros. Churros is a choux pastry that you then fry or bake and roll around in a cinnamon and sugar mix. Several contestants added extract or spices to their batter, but I prefer a basic churro. I kept this recipe simple and classic without any extra flavors or fillings because I love a plain churro!

There were three main tips I picked up from watching the episode. The first tip is that you want to make sure you mix your choux well when cooking. The main reason for this is so that you don’t end up with any flour lumps that will ruin your churro. You also want to make sure your texture is thicker and not too runny. Lastly, you want to make sure you chill your batter before baking. You don’t want it frozen, which one of the contestants do making it raw on the inside.

Step by step on how I made them:

First, add 1/3 cup of butter and 20 g sugar, and 1/4 tsp salt (everything but the eggs and flour). Once it starts simmering, pour 3/4 cup of flour in and start stirring it right away on a low heat. They talk about how you want to get some of the moisture out and cook the flour through. You’ll want to keep stirring/mushing it around for a minute or two after it comes together.

Next, transfer it to a mixing bowl and let it cool for about 4 minutes so it’s not steaming hot. If you pour the eggs in right away, the heat will scramble them. Once you think that the mixture isn’t too hot to scramble the eggs, SLOWLY add the eggs and vanilla to the mixer. Mix on low until it comes together and you get the right consistency. It should drip nicely off the paddle without being too runny or too thick, coming off kind of like a flowing ribbon.

Once you transfer the dough to a piping bag, you’re ready to pipe your churros! You want to use parchment or a silicone baking sheet. I used this piping tip. I tried to get them all close to the same length. Using scissors to cut the dough once it reaches the length you want give you clean cuts.

It’s important to refrigerate the dough on the baking tray for around an hour. If it’s not cold enough it may smoosh when you remove it. Once it’s nice and chilled, you can either use your regular oven and just keep it on the same baking tray (but I didn’t try it this way, so no promises), or you can transfer them into the air fryer, which is what I used. In the air fryer I flipped them half way through to get a more even bake. The first batch didn’t bake long enough so I upped the time to 8 minutes on each side at 375 °F. Right when they came out, I immediately rolled them in a sugar and cinnamon mixture. Once plated, I added some Nutella and they were gobbled up right away!

Final thoughts after making them:

The churros came out nicely in the air fryer, once I adjusted the cooking time. The texture is better from an actual fryer but it did get some crunch from the air fryer. I took a poll on who would want them again and who would rather have a different dessert and it was about half and half. The kids seemed to like them and they aren’t hard to please when it comes to dessert….the adults agreed that it wouldn’t be their first choice but thought they were good (I noticed they didn’t all get eaten from the adults plate). Overall, I would make them whenever I’m in the mood for a dessert and didn’t want to use the oil!