Rosquillas
Spanish ring doughnuts of aniseed and lemon dough, fried for 20 minutes in olive oil and rolled in sugar, a Madrid festival sweet.
Photograph credit: Madrid - Rosquillas listas de San Isidro by Zarateman · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Don't Make These Mistakes
Keep the oil at 170°C / 340°F.
Fry a few at a time.
Roll in sugar while hot.
Cooking Rosquillas
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Mix the flour, baking powder, 100 g sugar, eggs, anise liqueur, 50 ml oil, zest and salt to a soft dough. Rest for 15 minutes.
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Roll small pieces into 12 cm ropes and join the ends into rings with wet fingers.
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Heat the frying oil to 170°C / 340°F. Fry 4 at a time for 3 minutes on each side until pale gold.
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Drain on kitchen paper and roll in the 80 g sugar while hot.
What's Going On Here
The first sign they are ready is the smell: hot olive oil, lemon peel and anise drifting from the pan. Rosquillas are Spanish ring doughnuts, made in the days before Easter and at the spring festivals, and their dough is lighter than a yeast one because it is raised with baking powder and eggs.
Flavour the olive oil by warming it with a strip of lemon peel and removing the peel when it is fragrant. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, anise liqueur and lemon zest into a soft dough, adding more flour until it no longer sticks. Rest the dough for 15 minutes, then roll small pieces into ropes and join them into rings with wet fingers. They should be about 6 cm across, as they puff up.
Fry in oil at 170°C / 340°F, a few at a time, for about 3 minutes on each side until pale gold. They should not be dark. Drain on kitchen paper and roll in caster sugar while hot. They keep for several days in a tin and get more flavourful. Serve with coffee.
Leftovers, Reheating and Keeping
Keeps for 4 days in a tin.
What to Serve Alongside
- Coffee
- Anise liqueur
- Hot chocolate
Questions and Answers
How long does Rosquillas take to make?
25 minutes of preparation and 20 minutes of cooking, plus 15 minutes of resting, so allow 1 hour from start to finish. The recipe serves 20.
Nutrition per Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (how much frying oil the food takes up cannot be known from the recipe). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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