Donut delight

This is not for the calorie-conscious… You have been warned.

Kate and I are doughnut fans. Kate is a sucker for a good raspberry jam-filled one and due to my time in New York, I am a fan of a brand called Krispy Kreme. The only problem with this is that you can’t get Krispy Kremes in Scotland so she had never had the chance to sample this delight.

Until I came home with a box. So now she is a fan, and rather cruelly we can’t get any more.

So hooray for the internet and a bit of research, we were able to have a go at making our own.

This recipe makes 18 doughnuts.

Ingredients

for doughnuts
2 (7g) sachets dried active baking yeast 60ml warm water
355ml lukewarm milk
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
70g butter
625g plain flour

for icing

75g butter
200g icing sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
60ml hot water or as needed

Making the doughnuts

Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, and let stand for 5 minutes, or until foamy. This just gets the yeast going and makes the whole process a bit faster.

In a large bowl, mix together the yeast mixture, milk, sugar, salt, eggs, butter and 1/2 of the flour. It’s much easier if you have an electric mixer but a wooden spoon and some muscles will do the job.

Mix for a few minutes until smooth and then begin to mix in the remaining flour a little at a time, until the dough no longer sticks to the bowl.

Knead for about 5 minutes, or until smooth and elastic then place the dough into a greased bowl, and cover.

Set in a warm place to rise until double the size. (I put my dough in the oven on the very lowest temperature)

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and gently roll out to 1cm thickness.

Cut with a floured round cutter and let the doughnuts sit out to rise again until double. You can get fancy cutters for doughnuts but we just used a biscuit cutter and then a shot glass to make the hole in the middle.

Cover loosely with a cloth.

Making the icing

Melt the remaining butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in icing sugar and vanilla until smooth. Remove from heat, and stir in hot water one tablespoon at a time until the icing is somewhat thin, but not watery. Set aside to cool a little.

The cooking and icing

Heat oil in a deep-fryer or large heavy pan.

Slide doughnuts into the hot oil using a wide spatula. Turn doughnuts over as they rise to the surface.

Fry doughnuts on each side until light golden brown. It is tempting to overcook them, be careful you just want the doughnuts coloured and no more as the heat of the oil will keep cooking the doughnuts as they rest. We made this mistake at first.

Remove from hot oil and drain on a wire rack.

Dip doughnuts into the glaze while still hot, and set onto wire racks to drain off excess.

Keep a baking tray or kitchen towel under racks for easier cleanup.

Alternative version – jammy doughnuts

You can use this basic doughnut recipe to make all kinds of doughnuts. If you are a fan of filled doughnuts (think raspberry jam), then instead of cutting the doughnuts into ring shapes, roll them into little balls and flatten them slightly.

Once you cook them (in the same way), force a piping bag nozzle into them and squeeze jam in to fill the doughnut.