These Gluten-Free Vegan Churros are crispy on the outside, soft and pillowy on the inside, and coated with fragrant cinnamon sugar. They're also refined sugar free and baked not fried - much healthier than the traditional version!
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit).
Place the coconut oil in a large bowl and melt over a saucepan of boiling water or in the microwave.
Add the coconut sugar, salt, ground almonds, gluten-free flour and baking powder.
Add the milk and mix well - I recommend adding the milk a small amount at a time until you get a batter that is soft, but still firm enough to pipe into shapes. If you make the batter too wet, you won’t be able to pipe it into shapes. But if the batter does look too wet to pipe, place it in the fridge for an hour and it will firm up. If it looks too dry, add an extra splash of milk.
Transfer into a piping bag with a closed star tip - I used one that's 2.5cm (1 inch) wide.
Pipe the batter into churros measuring around 9 cm (3 ½ inch) in length onto baking trays lined with greased baking paper.
Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown and an inserted skewer comes out clean – be careful not to over-bake!
Meanwhile, mix together the ingredients for the cinnamon sugar.
Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the churros as soon as they are out of the oven - otherwise it won't stick to the churros.
They will still be very soft when they come out the oven, but will firm up as they cool down.
Tastes best when fresh, but keeps covered in the fridge for up to a few days - can be reheated in a dry frying pan or in the oven.
For the chocolate sauce:
Break up the chocolate into small pieces and place in a bowl with the milk.
Place the bowl over a pan of boiling water and stir regularly until melted – make sure not to overheat it as the chocolate will ‘split’ if you heat it too much.
If the chocolate does split, you can easily fix this by adding boiling hot water to it 1 teaspoon at a time and stirring well until the mixture goes back to normal.
The chocolate sauce keeps covered in the fridge for up to a few days. It will firm up as it cools down, but you can gently reheat leftovers over a pan of boiling water to make it liquid again.
Video
Notes
*You can alternatively use almond flour.**Use a refined sugar free chocolate if necessary.
A closed star piping tip is needed for your piping bag when making churros. This is because the star shape creates the characteristic ridges along the length of the churros.
It would be difficult to form the batter into long, thin shapes without using a piping bag. You can easily make your own piping bag, although you won't be able to get the ridges without using a star-shaped piping tip.
You can make your own piping bag by using a large, strong Ziploc bag and using scissors to snip off one of the corners. Just transfer the batter into the bag, and you can pipe it out of the hole you created in the corner of the bag.
You can replace the coconut sugar in the churros with any liquid sweetener such as maple syrup and decrease the amount of milk, although you won't get a golden brown colour.
For the chocolate sauce, use more milk if you want a thinner sauce, or use less milk for a thicker sauce.