Bomboloni- Italian for Fried Dough

This has been a big week for me. Huffington Post made me a legitimate blogger and my first articles went live, the ACC (lawyers, not sports) picked up my antitrust primer, and even AboveTheLaw, comment trolls and all, noticed me. While I'm at it, there's a book here.

Crazy stuff.

Anyway, I decided to celebrate by making something extremely delicious and extremely unhealthy. Not to mention that anyone who says that they don't like fried dough is either lying or selling something. But... well... why stop at frying things? Why not also stuff them with dark chocolate? Oh yes, I went there.

I did, in a sudden burst of generosity/realization that I would eat them if they stayed in my house, take the batch in to the contract job I've been working this week. My coworkers were kind enough to demolish the pile in short order.

Behold.

Chocolate-Filled Bombolonis
(original recipe on The Italian Dish)

3 packages rapid rise yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt
3 to 4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3-4 squares dark chocolate, broken into smaller pieces

Powdered sugar to coat & Canola oil to fry.

1) Mix together the yeast, water, sugar, egg, butter, milk and salt. Slowly add in the flour. Add between 3-4 cups of flour, enough flour so that the dough is no longer super sticky.

2) Cover dough and let rise for about an hour (until it doubles in size).

3) Punch dough down. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out about 1/8- 1/4 inch thick. Use a 2-inch round cookie cutter (or just turn a glass upside down) to cut out as many rounds as possible.

4) Take a chocolate bar, break it into pieces small enough to fill about 1/4-1/3 of the surface area of round. Center the chocolate in half of the rounds and, using the remaining half, make tiny chocolate sandwiches. Make sure that they are well sealed/connected or they will fall apart when you fry them.

5) Place on floured baking sheets and let rise again until doubled, about 10 minutes.

6) In a large, heavy pot over high heat, pour in oil. Heat to about 350 degrees on a thermometer. If you don't have a thermometer, it's ready when it takes a 1" cube of bread about 50 seconds to brown. Add a few of the bomboloni and fry, turning once, until golden. (This only takes about 30-40 seconds). Transfer to paper towels to drain. While still warm, sprinkle with sugar to coat thoroughly. Repeat with remaining dough.

Allow me to make a few safety points: 1) Plastic cooking items will melt, use wooden spoons, 2) Oil does splatter, but this shouldn't be spitting at you, 3) Cooking more than one, maybe two, at a time will eventually lower the oil temperature too much and, anyway, there is no way that you are going to be able to keep up with that many that fast.

Enjoy.