When I was first asked to make the unofficial Canadian pastry called a “beaver tail,” I was hesitant to take it on. While I'm a big fan of both fried dough and objects with subtly sexual names, my love for the U.S. of A. is abounding, and, on certain holidays, uncontrollable. What’s the big deal, you ask. It’s just a pastry, you say. Well, that hockey silver medal from Vancouver 2010 still stings and I wasn’t sure if I could risk bringing back those emotions so close to Sochi. After careful deliberation I decided I could suck it up for the sake of diplomacy, and because I really do like desserts.

Growing up on the East Coast, my experience with frying food is limited, but I recently moved to the American South where fried food is no joke. So when my friend asked me over for a wine night, I knew she would approve of the beaver tails. She assured me she had plenty of oil, and her husband even got a new deep fryer for the occasion. There’s that famous Southern hospitality.

Upon receiving the recipe I was greatly relieved to see American units of measure. Roll your eyes all you want. I know it’s called something else (imperial system?) but I didn’t have time to Google it because we were too busy adding warm water and sugar to dry yeast and huffing the sweet stinky result of that chemical reaction. What is yeast anyway?

In go milk, eggs, and oil. Plus this amazing vanilla from Mexico my friend had – I figured we would invite all of North America to the party. More sugar and most of the flour. Here is where it gets weird: the dough is wet and sticky. Like gum in your hair or the price tag on that cheap gift you got for mom because you forgot her birthday S-T-I-C-K-Y.

Working sans KitchenAid here, we have no choice but to proceed with this mess and add more flour to the mixture and hand knead. Five minutes and six hands later we have this sort of smooth, stretchy, mozzarella stick thing going on. We scraped as much of the gunk off our hands as we could, ate what we couldn’t get off and plopped what remained in a bowl to rise. At this point the dough is supposed to rest for 40 minutes. We forgot to set a timer but three quarters of a bottle of white wine later we realized the dough was huge and rising above the bowl to stick to the plastic wrap covering it. Seriously - what is yeast?

We started warming up the oil and forming our dough into ovals. Maybe we messed up some of those American measurements because the dough yielded about 50 ovals, which seems fine for the average American family, but excessive by Canadian standards. At this point we gave ‘em a rest and polished off the bottle of wine.

Right before frying we stretch each oval into a “beaver tail” shape. I found it easiest to hold at one end and shake it like a Polaroid picture to get some length. With the fryer set we started dropping them in the oil. The smell is amazing: bready and sweet and perfectly greasy. As they come out we experiment with toppings: cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar, local honey, and jams. The recipe says “divine with apple pie topping”. Apples aren’t really in season and I don’t use the word divine, but I think Nutella would have been great.

Here's the recipe I followed. Enjoy.