ridiculous hungry: DEEPLY FRIED - Lemon Vanilla Fritters With Fresh Strawberry Jam

Living in a desert clime since January, I’ve been enjoying the past few days of relative cool, some clouds and even a bit of rain in the mornings. While most people seem to perk up with the rays of the sun, I find there’s nothing like a little gray to give me pep. Maybe it’s because I’m a water sign (Fish) that the prospect of precipitation always gives me extra ambition for the day.

These days, while *working* from home (that’s what we’ll call it for now, my little pipe dream of making a modest living as a literal hermit turned virtual cooking teacher without flashing my white meat and/or being a vapid famewhore) extra ambition often means an extra experiment in the kitchen to see if I can make something delicious with whatever I’ve got on hand. When a rainy day coincides with the experiment, I find myself thinking about what I’d like to make for my kids with the hot chocolate they love to drink on just such a day.

So yesterday, I set out to make a deep-fried something sprinkled with powdered sugar and came up with these Lemon Vanilla Fritters using my Can't Bake For Shit mix (aka Bisquick). The fritters fry up quickly and taste like a lighter, crisper, fluffier miniature buttermilk bar with hints of lemon and vanilla. I purposely made them lightly sweet in anticipation of the powdered sugar dusting.

Deep fried delicious...

A quick strawberry jam from a handful of reject berries in the basket made a really delicious accompaniment, the leftovers to top a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream some day soon.

LEMON VANILLA FRITTERS WITH FRESH STRAWBERRY JAM

Makes about 20 two-bite fritters

It’s a good idea to make the strawberry jam first, as you don’t want to have to wait too long after the fritters are done to eat them.

Strawberry Jam

- 1 Cup sliced strawberries (5 to 6 medium)

- 1/3 Cup sugar

- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

- 2 teaspoons water

- pinch of salt (a gentle shake’s worth)

1) Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and cook over medium low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2) After 10 minutes, mash large strawberry bits with a fork. This will release more of the pectin from the fruit and help thicken the jam.

3) Simmer another 3 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is the consistency of thick syrup.

Fritters

- 2 Cups Bisquick

- 2 Tablespoons sugar

- 1 Tablespoon butter, melted

- 1 teaspoon finely chopped lemon zest (If you don’t have a microplane or zester, just run your vegetable peeler over the lemon, removing 2 or 3 strips of the rind, and chop into fine pieces. Try to avoid getting the bitter pith (white part) with the rind.)

- 1/2 Cup + 1 Tablespoon milk

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 2 Cups oil for frying (canola, vegetable or light olive work)

- Powdered sugar for dusting

1) Combine all dry ingredients (Bisquick, sugar and lemon zest) in a bowl and stir to incorporate.

2) Add wet ingredients (milk, vanilla extract and melted butter) and stir just enough times to incorporate all the dry ingredients with the wet.

3) Preheat the oil over a slightly higher than medium flame until a small piece of batter thrown in fries and bubbles gently.

4) Using two teaspoons (the ones you eat with, not the dainty little ones that came with your mother's china set), form a heaping teaspoon of batter into a football shaped fritter, and gently lay into oil, frying no more than 4 at a time. (After 3 or 4, you need to start flipping.)

These should take about 1 minute per side to reach a golden brown color and ensure the batter is cooked all the way through. If they are browning too quickly (which they did with my first batch), turn the heat down a touch and wait a minute or two before frying again.

5) Rest fried fritters for 2 to 3 minutes on a double layer of paper towels to absorb oil and cool a bit.