New Year's Olliebollen

Well, I'll be showing my roots, but every New Year's Eve, I have always had Olliebollen. Lately, I make it, just like my mother still does and her mother before her and so on. We're Dutch. We ring in the new year by eating these deep-fried beauties.

I'm pretty sure there are as many variants on the recipe as there are Dutch out there, but here's the recipe I use:

Olliebollen Recipe - yields about 2 dozen

1 Tbsp. quick rise yeast

1 cup milk

2 1/4 cups flour

2 tsp. salt

1 egg, room temperature

1 1/4 cups dried currants (raisins if you prefer)

1 thickly grated tart apple

Warm the milk to lukewarm. Combine the milk, 1 cup of the flour, salt, yeast, and egg together in a large bowl. Mix in the rest of the flour to form a thick batter. Stir in the currants and apple until well incorporated. Leave batter to rise in a warm place until double in size, about 40 minutes. It should look like this:

Heat enough vegetable oil to 375 degrees F to deep fry these olliebollen. (I use my electric wok set on high with about 1 1/2 inches of oil in it.) Drop the batter by tablespoon into the hot oil.

I try to cook about 6 or 7 at a time, but by staggering their entry into the oil by 30 seconds or so, the first one will be done when the last one has been in a bit. This way the oil doesn't cool too much and you don't have to rush to get any in or out "on time". Fry about 4 minutes on each side. They should come out lightly brown all over. In the picture above, the bottom 3 have been flipped already. When they are that color all over, they are done. Remove to a paper towel-lined colander and sprinkle with icing sugar.

Go ahead, try one! Good luck stopping at just one! These are fantastic when served warm, but they're still great even when they've cooled off. Enjoy!

Happy New Year!