These churro bars first turned up on my plate at Mercado 20 de Noviembre in Oaxaca, day two of Guelaguetza, when I had not actually ordered anything. A vendor named Doña Lupe shoved a square wrapped in waxed paper into my hand because I had been staring at her tray for two full minutes. I bit in standing up, leaning against a column near the meat aisle. Cinnamon sugar on my chin. Brown butter underneath. Not a churro, exactly. Better, possibly.
I went back the next morning. And the morning after.
The Market Stall in Oaxaca That Started It
Doña Lupe’s stall sat between a woman selling tlayudas and a guy with about forty kinds of dried chiles. She had two trays of golden squares behind glass, dusted so heavily in cinnamon sugar that the tray looked like it had been snowed on. The festival noise was constant. Brass bands moving through the calles outside, vendors calling out, kids weaving through the crowd in dancers’ costumes for the parade later that afternoon.
She told me, when I worked up the nerve to ask, that these were not really churros. Everyone at the festival wanted churros. Standing over a fryer in July in Oaxaca is, she said, a kind of slow punishment. So she baked these instead. I asked if I could write down what she did and she handed me a stub of pencil and a folded brown paper bag. The recipe came out in three lines on the back. Brown the butter first. Sugar the bottom of the pan. Bake low.
Why Churro Bars Are Not Really Churros
She was right, of course. Real churros are piped choux dough, forced through a star tip, deep-fried in oil and rolled in cinnamon sugar while still hot. Spain has been making them since at least the 14th century, depending on whose story you believe. One version credits shepherds frying strips of dough over open fires. Another credits Portuguese sailors copying a fried dough technique they had seen in Ming-dynasty China that looked an awful lot like youtiao.
What we think of as the cinnamon-sugar churro flavor is actually the Mexican version. Spanish colonization carried the pastry across the Atlantic and Mexico is where the cinnamon coating became the default. The bar form itself is even newer, an American food-blog invention from the 2010s that exploded on TikTok around 2020 with a crescent-roll version. So what I was eating in Oaxaca was a Mexican vendor’s spin on an American spin on a Spanish fried pastry. That’s three generations of borrowed ideas in one square.
I love that. It is exactly the kind of food I want to keep cooking.
Bringing Churro Bars Back to My LA Kitchen
The flight home included a layover in CDMX, which I used to eat one more proper churro at El Moro just to compare. Then back to my apartment, jet-lagged, brown sugar shoved into my carry-on because I knew I wanted to test this within forty-eight hours of landing.
The brown butter is the part I am most religious about. Doña Lupe used a light-colored aluminum pot so she could see the milk solids darken. I use my smallest saucepan, the one with the dented lid my mother passed off to me years ago. Swirl. Watch. The smell tells you when it has gone nutty, and it goes fast. The second the bottom looks deep golden you pour it off the heat or you have burnt butter, not browned.
The other thing I would not skip is the double dusting. Half the cinnamon sugar goes on the parchment under the dough. Half goes on top. When you slice the bars the bottom is almost caramelized, crackly in a way that mimics the outside of a fried churro better than any topping alone can manage. That was Doña Lupe’s real trick, and the reason I keep coming back to her version.
What I Used
- Unsalted butter, browned slowly until the kitchen smells toasted
- Granulated sugar for the dough and more for the coating
- Light brown sugar, packed
- Two room-temperature eggs
- Vanilla extract
- All-purpose flour, spooned and leveled so it does not pack
- Baking powder and fine sea salt
- Ground cinnamon, the Mexican kind if you can find it. I get mine at the little Oaxacan grocery on Pico near Vermont. Ceylon canela tastes nothing like the supermarket stuff and it matters here.
The Small Changes I Made at Home
I tested the recipe four times. The first round I used grocery-store cinnamon and it tasted dusty and one-note. Do not. The second round I overbaked the pan by four minutes and the centers went dry. The third round I underpressed the dough into the corners and the edges came out twice as thick as the middle.
By the fourth round I had it. Press the dough flat with floured fingertips, take your time, get it into all four corners. Pull them when the center still looks barely set, not when it looks done. They firm up as they cool on the rack. I let mine sit at least half an hour before lifting the parchment out, then slice them on my wooden table where the afternoon light hits.
I have served them warm with vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche. I have eaten one for breakfast standing at the counter, Nick Drake playing through the speaker. Both work.
If You Want to Mess With It
A scoop of vanilla ice cream and a hard drizzle of dulce de leche is the obvious move and it is excellent. A mug of Mexican hot chocolate alongside is even better, since the spice in good Mexican chocolate plays straight into the cinnamon. I have been tempted to add a pinch of cayenne to the topping. I almost did it last weekend. Decided against it. The browned butter is doing enough heavy lifting already.
Store leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature. They hold up four days, and the cinnamon sugar stays crackly the whole time, which is the small miracle of this format.
I think of Doña Lupe whenever I make them. I still have the folded paper bag with her three-line recipe tucked inside my recipe drawer, the pencil marks smudged but readable. Not a bad souvenir.
Churro Bars
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Brown the butter. Cut the butter into tablespoon-sized pieces and place in a light-colored saucepan over medium heat. Swirl the pan often as the butter melts, foams, and then quiets. After 5 to 7 minutes the milk solids at the bottom will turn deep golden brown and the kitchen will smell nutty and toasted. Immediately pour the butter, including the browned bits, into a heatproof bowl and let it cool until it is the texture of very soft, scoopable butter, about 25 minutes. You can speed this up by chilling it for 10 minutes in the refrigerator and stirring every few minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a 9x13 inch baking pan with parchment paper, leaving a 2 inch overhang on the long sides so you can lift the bars out later.
- Make the cinnamon sugar. In a small bowl, whisk together the 0.5 cup granulated sugar and 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon until fully combined and uniform in color. Sprinkle half of this mixture, about 5 tablespoons, evenly over the parchment in the bottom of the pan.
- Cream the fats. Scrape the cooled brown butter into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or use a large bowl with a hand mixer. Add 1 cup granulated sugar and the brown sugar. Beat on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes until the mixture lightens and looks fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each, then beat in the vanilla extract. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in two additions, mixing on low speed just until no dry streaks remain. The dough will be thick and sticky.
- Drop the dough in spoonfuls over the cinnamon sugar in the prepared pan. With lightly floured fingertips or a small offset spatula, press and spread the dough into an even layer that reaches all four corners. Take your time; an even layer bakes evenly.
- Shower the remaining cinnamon sugar generously and evenly over the top of the dough. Use all of it. This is what gives churro bars their signature crust.
- Bake on the center rack for 25 to 30 minutes, until the edges are lightly golden and pulling away from the pan and the center is just set but still soft to the touch. Do not overbake or the bars will dry out.
- Transfer the pan to a wire rack and cool for at least 30 minutes. Using the parchment overhang, lift the slab out of the pan and place it on a cutting board. Slice into 16 bars with a sharp knife, wiping the blade between cuts for clean edges.
- Serve at room temperature or gently warmed. They are best the day they are baked but stay tender for up to 4 days in an airtight container.