Every year around the beginning of november, a familiar smell fills the streets of Dutch cities… Oliebollen! These deep-fried dough balls are a national favourite. They’re traditionally eaten around new year’s and there’s all kinds of variations on them. My personal favourite is the kind with raisins. Yum!
This year I tried my hand at making them myself for the first time, and I was really surprised by how easy it was. Today I’m sharing the recipe with you!
Ingredients
500g flour
500ml buttermilk
125g raisins (soaked in water)
1 egg
2 tbsp sugar
14g dried yeast
1 tsp salt
Procedure
Start by soaking the raisins in water for 15 minutes, then drain them.
Slowly warm up the buttermilk in a saucepan over low heat. Combine the sugar and yeast. When the milk is warm, add the yeast and sugar to it.
Put the flour into a large bowl, and add the milk, egg and salt. Stir to combine, then add the raisins. Cover the dough with a warm damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for an hour.
Heat up a litre of oil to 180°C. Use two spoons to make balls out of the dough, and deep fry them for 3 minutes. Leave to drip on some tissue paper, then serve with icing sugar.
For a visual walk-though, watch the video below!
I recently tried a variation with little cubes of apple and a dash of cinnamon. It was delicious! You might want to try that ;)
Enjoy!
Hello Loepsie, do you know about how many Oliebollen this makes? 20-30? Thank You!
Can I use baking soda or baking powder instead of yeast? Would I use the same measurement as yeast? I lost our cookbook called Little Red Apple Cookbook and can only recall no yeast was needed. Really appreciate your help. Thankyou
Dear Loepsie,
Thanks for the oliebollen recipe. If you have the “broodpudding” , would appreciate to have this.
Thank you so much.
Best wishes,
Jane
Hellooo , I have been searching for this recipe for a while but now that I found you I would like to try this. However, the measurement is not in cups. Can you plse tell me how many cups flour and buttermilk the recipe calls?
Your quick response is very much appreciated.
Thks in advance and have a nice day.
Kind rgds,
Harriet
Hi Harriet,
We use grams for baking in the Netherlands, so I haven’t tried to do the recipe using cups. You could always use http://www.convertunits.com/from/grams/to/cups :) Good luck!
Strange that you use tablespoons in the recipe and then grams for the rest. Confusing.
I am not sure why but the buttermilk I used (yes, it was fresh) separated when warming it. Perhaps it’s not the same kind of buttermilk that you buy in the Netherlands. Might have to find another recipe.