Desperately seeking churros

Churros (based on Dean Derhak's recipe)
vegetable oil
1 cup water
1/2 cup margarine or butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs
1/4 cup sugar

1. Heat water, margarine and salt to rolling boil in saucepan; stir in flour.
2. Stir vigorously over low heat until mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat.
3. Beat eggs until smooth, then add to saucepan while stirring mixture.
4. Spoon mixture into cake decorators' tube with large star tip (like the kind use to decorate cakes).
5. Squeeze strips of dough into hot oil. Fry 3 or 4 strips at a time until golden brown, turning once.
6. Drain on wire rack.
7. Roll churros in sugar or dump the sugar on the pile of churros.

Right. So the end result didn't exactly match what I had in mind. You'll see from the picture above what churros should look like, more or less. And here's how mine turned out.

Homemade churros con chocolate

My main problem was not having the right equipment. I really needed a larger star tip. Much larger. Not just that, the decorator's tube kept collapsing. In the end, I gave up and used rolled up baking paper (Mum swears by it, but she's had heaps of practice) so my churros looked like soft little worms.

Taste-wise, I found this recipe quite bland. However, this might be partly due to my equipment problems. I read that using the right star tip is essential as it allows the churros to cook evenly all around (rather than being soft and soggy in the middle).

Some Valrhona drinking chocolate rounded off this little experiment and kept me reasonably happy despite the mixed results and massive clean-up afterwards.