December:
Our theme this month was Family and Traditions, and I would like to finish this awesome holiday filled month with my favorite dutch holiday recipe: Oliebollen!
Every year on new year’s eve my dad dedicates hours to making the perfect ‘oliebollen’ recipe. He starts a meager day early. First he steeps raisins in a bowl of rum and lets them well overnight. The next morning he mixes the dough with rum and warm water and lets the dough rise in a cozy nook next to the fireplace. Just as he makes the oliebollen every year, he also manages to trick my brother into smelling the dough a bit more intimately than intended every year, by means of a friendly face-dunk. And then he fries the dough in hot oil to create a crunchy exterior and the fluffiest dough inside. The frying of the oliebollen can take hours and during the evening there is a steady stream of fresh batches and the entire family takes shifts in frying them. Some of my fondest new-year’s eve memories are of frying the dough together with my parents and siblings with a nice drink in hand and the occasional bite of delicious doughy-ness
For this recipe you need:
Oliebollen dough (either a mix that you can buy in any grocery store or dough from the recipe below)
Lukewarm water
250 grams of raisins
Rum (or honey)
Sunflower oil
Powdered sugar
Home made dough:
If you want you can always make the dough from scratch, which is pretty easy. For this you would need:
500 ml of lukewarm milk (or any vegan alternative)
7 grams of dry yeast
2 Tablespoons of white sugar or 100 ml rum
500 grams of all purpose flour
A pinch of salt
1 egg (It decreases the amount of oil that is soaked up so for a vegan version you can leave this out)
Steps:
First steep your raisins in rum or sugar water overnight
If you are using an oliebollen mix, add the water to the dough and mix until smooth. Skip to step 4.
If you are making the dough from scratch follow these steps first:
Heat the milk up to a lukewarm temperature (not too hot because then the yeast won’t work) and mix in the dry yeast and sugar/rum.
Let this rest for 10 minutes
In a separate bowl: mix the flour and salt, and then add the egg.
As you are mixing add the milk-mixture to the flour and keep mixing until the dough is smooth
Mix in the welled raisins and let the dough rise in a warm place for at least an hour, my dad would traditionally let it rise for up to 5 or 6 hours. Afterwards the dough should be thick but still fluid enough to drip.
Heat up sunflower oil in a deep pan or frying pan. Make sure the pan is deep enough for the oliebollen to swim in, the dough will float to the top if it rose correctly.
Use two spoons to scoop a roughly round ball out of the dough ball and drop it into the boiling oil. After 2 minutes, turn the ball around so that it is baked evenly on both sides.
Repeat this until the dough is finished and serve the oliebollen with a healthy dose of powdered sugar and voilá.
Enjoy your delicious treat!
Happy treat-filled holidays!
Char 😀🎉