Mushabbak (Golden Fried Fritters)
You don’t need holiday reason to make these. While, these little crispy fritters are usually made around the holiday season (EID), I make them few times a year because they are truly easy and absolutely delicious and a favorite with everyone. This crispy, sweet, and addictive classic Middle Eastern dessert is reminiscent of the funnel cake. The texture of Mushabbak is crispy on the outside and soft and syrupy on the inside. Traditionally, the batter is golden when fried and dipped in syrup, however, over the years color has been added to the batter or the syrup itself. Food coloring like orange and red are among the popular colors, but saffron and turmeric can be used as well. As for the spiral part that can be achieved by a squeeze bottle or even a pipping bag with a small tip, an empty ketchup or mustard bottle may be used as well. Syrup may be divided into 2 or 3 parts and desired food coloring may be added to each. Being a home cook, I was a little sloppy in making perfectly round spirals at first, but isn’t that what home cooking is all about? The comfort and happiness of sharing homemade food with friends and family.
Ingredients
- 1 cup of flour
- 1 cups of corn stretch
- 1 1/2 to 2 cups of water + more if needed - (pancake batter consistency needed)
- 1 Tsp. of dry instant yeast
- 1 Tsp. of sugar
- 1 liter Canola oil for frying
- Squeeze Plastic bottle
- Ahter ~Sugar Syrup
- 4 cups white sugar
- 2 cups water
- 2 tsp. lemon juice
- 2 tsp. orange blossom water
- 4 Cardamom pods
- Red Food coloring (optional)
- Turmeric powder ( optional)
Instructions
- In a bowl, add ½ cup of lukewarm water with 1 tsp of sugar, and sprinkle yeast on the top. Stir, let it foam for 5 minutes.
- Mushabbak batter: in a bowl, add rest of batter ingredients flour, corn starch and water) to make a smooth batter of pancake batter consistency (add 1 tablespoon of water at a time if required to get desired batter). Cover and set aside for one hour to ferment.
Prepare the syrup. In a sauce pan, place the sugar, cardamom pods, and water over medium heat and bring to boil for 5 minutes. Add the lemon juice and rose water and bring to a boil again and simmer for 10 more minutes. Turn off and let the syrup cool completely. (Syrup needs to be at room temperature or you won’t get that crunch that Mushabbak has.
Frying Mushabbak: Heat oil in a fryer with clean oil. Stir batter to deflate the bubbles, then transfer fermented Mushabbak batter into a piping bag with ⅛ inch piping tip or a squeeze bottle. Pipe the Mushabbak into hot oil a few at a time. Make free-form spirals like a funnel cake. Deep fry 1 minutes each side until golden and crispy.
Transfer each deep fried Mushabbak into the syrup for 1 minute and then remove onto a tray lined with cookie rack. This will help drip the extra sugar syrup.
Adding different colors: I usually split my Attar “sugar syrup” in half. Leaving one plain and the other I add my desired (red) food color to a shade you like, however, plain is usually the best. Also, if you want a deeper yellow add turmeric to your batter or divide in half and make one plain golden and one deeper yellow. If your making these for the first time, I would recommend make them plain golden first and you can experiment later on.
