Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm a New Orleans native living away from the city. My wife and I like to have Beignets on Sunday mornings. Our results vary, surprisingly some times. On our recent trip to New Orleans we stood behind Cafe Du Monde by Jackson Square and watched the pros making the tasty fritters and learned a couple of things. 1) The dough needs to be very very moist. It almost oozes when they drop it into the machine that rolls them out. 2) The instructions tell you to use a lot of flower. We werent using enough, but when your dough is super wet you really need that flour. 3) The instructions say 1/8 of an inch but i think that they should be closer to 3/16's or a quarter of an inch. I think that the directions call for 2 cups of mix to make 2 dozen Beignets, i think that 2 cups of mix should give you closer to 1 dozen. (we usually make half that much) 4) 370 seems to be a good oil temp, as the instructions request. To know that you have the mix thick and wet enough the beignets should take just about 4 minutes to cook. If they cook faster than that, they are either too thin or too dry or both. (We timed the cook at Cafe du Monde at just about 3:50) 5) When the pros make them, they toss the flower covered dough into the oil and dunk them occasionally as they're getting all of the beignets tossed in. One they're all in, they use a perforated screen material to hold them submerged during the rest of cooking. We had an epiphany when watching this. We could get a very similar result at home by taking the basket out of our deep frier and tossing the beignets directly into the oil. The thing is, the beignets will float, so you can easily scoop them out with a slotted spoon. This allows us to use the basket to keep them pushed under the oil. I tried this yesterday and it worked great. A couple of the beignets touched the heating element and got a little burn mark on them but either way, these were the best i've ever made. My wife cant tell the difference but i swear that the sugar that they used in New Orleans tastes different than the stuff we've been getting from our super market. It's sweeter and has no after taste. I find our confectioners sugar has a slightly bitter after taste. I think that theirs tends to want to clump a little which makes me think that the store bought stuff has an ingredient to keep it from clumping that theirs lacks. I'm going to be on the hunt for a higher quality sugar. I hope that these tips help someone. Good luck. Also, if you ever get the chance to visit Cafe du Monde, you should do so. If for no better reason than to give your pallet an ideal to strive for!