Quark Fritters vs Cottage Cheese Fritters

quark fritters

cottage cheese fritters

Lately, I've been craving a lot of unhealthy foods, one of them being donuts. I've been holding onto this recipe for a while now and haven't come around to making it until I couldn't fight my craving for fried foods any longer. I decided to make this a culinary experiment while satisfying my hunger, trying quark fritters for the first time. 

Quark Fritters

Recipe from collectingmemories.blogspot

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Yield: about 20 fritters

Ingredients

400 grams (1.6 cups) quark or cottage cheese

3 eggs

6 tbsp sugar

1 tsp vanillin sugar

9 tbsp flour

oil for frying

powdered sugar

Directions

1. Heat your frying oil to 325 degrees F. 
2. Beat together the eggs, sugar, and vanillin sugar. Add the quark or cottage cheese and mix until combined. Add the flour 1 tbsp at a time, mixing until fully incorporated. The dough should be sticky but thick and be able to hold its shape. 
3. Using an ice cream scooper, scoop 1 tbsp of the dough and carefully drop it into the hot oil. The fritter will first sink than rise up and continue to fry. Fry until golden brown. Repeat with the remaining batter, cooking the fritters in batches to avoid overcrowding. Dust with powdered sugar and serve warm. 

Nutrition Facts 

per serving: 176 calories, 14.9g fat (2.3g saturated, 6.8g polyunsaturated, 5g monounsaturated), 7g carbohydrates, 0.1g fiber, 3.9g protein

**Helpful tips and common mistakes

When I first saw this post, the recipe looked easy except for one thing: what was quark? After doing some research, I discovered that quark is a type of fresh cheese that is most popular in Europe. It is more commonly referred to cottage cheese here in the United States, but the two are not completely the same. Quark (on the left) has a smoother, creamier texture and is not made with rennet which commercial cottage cheese is. Cottage cheese is also chunky in texture and can have salt included in the cheese. I personally like cottage cheese better because quark had a slightly more tangy taste, but the preference is all up to the individual. 

The first batch I made was with the quark. I did half the recipe and found that after 4.5 tbsp of flour, the batter was still very runny and did not keep in shape. I added a couple more tablespoons of flour to get a thicker consistency; however, even than I was unable to shape the dough with my hands. The easier solution? Use an ice cream scooper! You may not get the perfect shape but it's much easier to fry than shaping the dough by hand and dropping it into the oil.

The procedure was the same for the batter with the cottage cheese. 

Now when you are frying, you have to make sure that your oil is not too hot. If it's too hot, the outside will brown too quickly before the inside is cooked. Also make sure your fritters aren't too big or else it will take a while for the inside to cook.

Powder with sugar and these fritters are ready to eat!

On the left side is the quark fritter and on the right is the cottage cheese fritter. After tasting the two, I realized that I had added too much flour to the quark fritter; if the batter is to be on the runnier side, how are you supposed to shape them into balls, I wonder. Despite this, the fritter itself still tasted nice. Now which do I prefer? The cottage cheese fritters! The inside was lighter and airier and I loved the little chunks of cottage cheese you get once in a while. It was also more moist the quark fritters. This can also be a personal preference since I did like the cottage cheese over the quark. 

Now if I can only stop eating them...