Chanukah Recipe: Light Sweet Sephardic Fritters – Sfenj

Sfenj are light-not-too-sweet fritters eaten all over the Middle East and North Africa. They appear at celebrations and at family parties, or as Grandmother’s treat to the small fry. At Chanukah time, they make a nice change from the sufganiyot (jelly donuts) on sale all over Israel at this time of year and have much less oil.

Sfenj are easy to make and require few ingredients, but the cook has to take into consideration that the dough needs a long rising time. 3 hours is none too many, and it may need 4. So schedule the rising time into your day and plan to heat the oil up for frying only about half an hour before you mean to serve. Alternately, you can let the dough rise overnight in the fridge, take it out in the morning and let it warm to room temperature.

The last time I ate Sfenj, it was the day after a Moroccan wedding. I had stayed overnight at the house of Fortuna, the bride’s aunt.   When I made my bleary-eyed way into the kitchen at about 7:00 a.m., sfenj were already turning golden in hot oil. Fortuna had been up at dawn to give her dough enough time to rise. She fished them out of the pan and gently dropped them, still warm, into granulated sugar. Golden-brown, dusted with sugar, and piled onto a decorative platter, they looked tempting and smelled divine. I could hardly take my eyes off them, and left the kitchen in a hurry so I shouldn’t get my hands on them too.

As tradition demands, the new couple came for breakfast at their parent’s house. Both sets of parents and and all the  siblings gathered to drink coffee and tea with mint, and to eat these crisp, light fritters. It was a time for the families to bond – a quiet time after all the noise and high emotion of the previous night. We passed the big platter around and sipped our hot drinks. Gradually we started feeling a favorable start to a new day, and a new life for the bride and groom.

Sfenj

This recipe makes a lot of sfenj, enough breakfast for 12 people. It may be halved.

Ingredients:

1 cup warm water

1 oz. fresh yeast

2 lbs. sifted white flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups more warm water

Oil for frying the sfenj

Granulated sugar

Method:

1. Dissolve the yeast in 1 cup of water.
2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and salt.
3. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the yeast/water mixture. Add 1 1/4 more cups of water.
4. Mix the ingredients with a long-handled spoon. If it becomes difficult, add a little more water. The texture should be loose and sticky, more like a thick batter than a dough.
5. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise 3 to 4 hours. It should be light and bubbly, having doubled in size.
6. Start heating the oil in a deep frying pan. Use a medium flame and give the oil at least 5 minutes to heat up.
7. Don’t beat the dough down. You want to keep as much of the bubbles in it as you can, to keep the fritter light.
8. When you judge the oil to be hot, wet your hands.
9. To make the sfenj fritters, pull out a piece of dough about the size of a large plum. Pull the center of the dough lump out to the sides, making a hole in it and forming a ring. Drop it into the hot oil
10. Keep your hands wet to prevent the dough from sticking. Drop the fritters into the oil one by one, but don’t crowd them in the pan. When you see that the bottoms are brown, turn them over.
11. When both sides are golden brown, remove the sfenj from the oil. Drain them on paper towels.
12. Let the fritters cool down slightly, then lower each one onto a plate that’s covered with a thick layer of sugar. It’s enough to sugar only one side. Remove them from the sugar and pile them onto a clean platter.
13. Serve right away.