Churrolls: you’ve heard of the New York roll and now you can try the Spanish twist on it

If the New York roll is a worldwide trending dessert, the local offering at the Churros & Co churrería in San Pedro Alcántara is where its most successful Spanish replica has been created. It all started when a customer discovered that the churroll, one of the types of homemade churros (a type of fried dough) offered in the shop, was similar in shape to the famous NY roll.

On the plus side however, the San Pedro Alcántara version has less fat, because one of the obsessions of Paco García, ex-director of the restaurant El Lago and director of Calma Eladio, was to create the perfect churros.

To achieve this goal, he travelled all over Spain until he found, in Valladolid, someone who had spent years trying to achieve the perfect churro. It came down to finding the ideal temperature for frying and the right type of flour, kneaded to perfection, which produced the crispiest churros.

At Churros & Co they work with Madrid-style star-shaped churros, simply because, according to Paco García, "it is the shape that is crispiest and accumulates the least oil inside".

From this base, thin, elongated conventional churros are made, as well as wider, hollow churros, or churrolls, a unique creation involving rolling up the traditional long churro into a spiral before frying it. Once browned, it looks a bit like a biscuit.

Initially, the churrolls were served sprinkled with cinnamon or icing sugar, or filled with ice cream, but one day, someone told García that the churrolls looked like New York rolls, which led him to developing the San Pedro roll.

Now, the homemade chocolate sauce filling is injected into the churro after frying. Two churrolls cost €2.90, adding ice cream costs an extra €2.50 and the San Pedro roll, with its chocolate sauce filling, costs €3.90 for two.

Churros & Co is at 30 Calle Pizarro, San Pedro de Alcántara. www.churrosandco.com.