Homemade Cake Doughnuts / Donuts

I am not a big fan of donuts. In fact I can't even remember the last time I ate a donut. But a friend of mine found this recipe on Bakerella's site ( a site I am a HUGE fan of) and tried with much success. So I printed the recipe to try myself. I am not one for eating anything deep fried since I try to live as healthy as possible (  I do sample my recipes but send the rest with the hubby to work. Life is about moderation afterall!) and I wanted to make oven baked donuts instead of frying but I don't have a donut pan and I really couldn't wait the 3-4 weeks for one to get shipped to me so I went the way of the deep fry. I was really scared to have a giant pot of hot oil on my stove but surprisingly it was a lot easier than I thought.

Started out melting the butter. I prefer melting it in my stainless steel measuring cup over low heat on my stove than in my microwave. I have been known to blow up sticks of butter and that is a giant greasy mess to clean up.

All my ingredients set to go

The batter is very sticky so I chilled for an hour in my fridge to make it more manageable to roll out

I love using my silicone bake mats for rolling out doughs, fondant etc. You only need to use a little bit of flour so you don't end up making your batter tough with all that extra flour. I also didn't have a donut cutter so I used a tuna can ( cleaned of course) and a small fondant circle cutter. I rolled the dough to 1/4 inch thickness like the recipe stated but the donuts came out really small. I think 1/2 inch would have been much better. I made a few 1/2 inch and they came out looking more like the donuts you get in a bakery. 

Here we go. Scary hot oil part

Not getting splattered like I thought I would be

They first sink to the bottom 

then pop right up to the surface. After a minute I flipped them over.

getting nice and golden

first two donuts I have ever made and first two items I have ever deep fried. I'm not so scared of the oil after all

 The recipe states it makes 12 donuts and 12 holes. I made like 30. I think because I made them 1/4 inch. They were good just the 1/2 inch size probably would have yielded 12

I dipped half the donuts in chocolate glaze and half in vanilla glaze.  Topped with toasted coconut, macadamia nuts, chocolate sprinkles and rainbow sprinkles

You can see that these are kinda "skinny" donuts

the "fatter" one I made. Cut with the dough rolled 1/2 inch. Perfect size

YUM!!!

Home made Cake Doughnuts/Donuts ( depending on how you spell them!)

recipe adapted from Bakerella

Slightly Dry Cake Doughnuts
4.5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

• Sift flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt in a bowl and set aside.
• Beat eggs in a medium bowl until frothy. Add sugar and continue beating until combined.
• In another bowl, combine melted butter, milk and vanilla.
• Add the milk mixture to the egg mixture and stir until combined.
• Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture stir until combined.
• Chill the dough for about 60 minutes to make it easier to work with. (Ha!)
• Generously flour your work surface and roll dough out about 1/2 inch thick. Use a silicone bake mat if you have one.
• Use a doughnut cutter or two circle cutters (1 and 3 inch) to cut out shapes.
• Heat about 2 quarts oil (about 3 inches deep) in a large, heavy pot to about about 360 degrees. Use a candy/deep fry thermometer to monitor the heat.
• Fry 1-2 doughnuts at a time about a minute on each side. (I didn’t actually time this, but it wasn’t too long)
• Remove and place on a paper towel-lined tray.
• When cool, sprinkle powdered sugar or dip them in a vanilla glaze.
• Makes 12 doughnuts and 12 doughnut holes. Approximately

)
Vanilla glaze
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 Tbsp butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
3-5 Tbsp milk

• With a mixer, mix sugar and butter.
• Add vanilla
• Add milk one tablespoon at a time until you reach the desired consistency.
• To make chocolate glaze melt and cool bittersweet or semi sweet chocolate and add to leftover vanilla. Probably about 1 cup or so. I didn't measure the exact amount. 

Doughnut Muffins

It's a doughnut. No wait its a muffin. But it looks like a cupcake! WHAT IS IT?!?

Why its a doughnut muffin!! A what?? Yes its a muffin that is baked like a cupcake but tastes like a doughnut.

I was having a discussion the other day with my friend Kaysie, who is an excellent cook and she loves my baked goods and I told her one of the things I wanted to try next was homemade doughnuts. She told me she had a doughnut muffin recipe that's killer and they're baked in the oven so none of that scary giant pot of hot oil for deep frying. So I looked up some recipes on Google when I got home  and found tons. I saw this one from Baking Bites  http://bakingbites.com/2008/09/sugar-donut-muffins/

and another from this site: 

http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/doughnut_muffins.aspx

And decided to go with the recipe from fine cooking because I wanted to make a TON of them not just ten of them. I will add the recipe in at the end of the post.

The recipe started out with lots of butter, sugar and eggs

Then once creamed the wet and dry ingredients get added in alternately and stirred by hand

This is a stiff and sticky batter/dough so stirring was a good workout!

Once the batter was smooth but not over mixed it was time to fill the tins

I am so used to using cupcake liners so it was odd for me to grease and flour the tins but it is an important step so they pop right out of the tins once baked

I made the HUGEST mess doing this. Flour all over me, the pans, the counter, the floor- well you get the idea. But I got the pans covered evenly and that's what matters most

First batch ready for the oven

I got 30 muffins out of this recipe not 24 like stated so I made 6 of each of my kinds I wanted to make sort of like assorted doughnuts so I made 6 of them jelly filled

filled with strawberry jam and then topped with a little more batter

Hmm I guess I didn't take any pics of them fresh out of the oven. Moving on

I set up my topping station while the butter melted ( I forgot to mention how low fat these are NOT!)

powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar, superfine sugar for the jelly ones, vanilla and chocolate glazes

And sprinkles for the glazed ones

Painted on just a touch of melted butter so the toppings would stick

Rolling in cinnamon sugar

superfine sugar for the jelly ones

dunking for the chocolate glazed ones

Here are the cinnamon sugar ones

powdered sugar

Jelly filled with superfine sugar

vanilla glazed with sprinkles aka non pareils

And the chocolate glazed with sprinkles aka jimmies

all packaged up like a box of assorted doughnuts - yet they're a muffin!!

Here is the recipe:

For the muffins:
12 oz. (24 Tbs.) unsalted butter, warmed to room temperature
1-3/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 lb. 11 oz. (6 cups) all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. plus 2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1-3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
1-2/3 cups milk
1/4 cup buttermilk

For dipping:
8 oz. (16 Tbs.) unsalted butter; more as needed
2 cups sugar
2 Tbs. ground cinnamon

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To make the muffins Put a rack in the middle of the oven and heat the oven to 350°F. In a stand mixer or a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until just mixed in. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. Combine the milk and buttermilk. With a wooden spoon, mix a quarter of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture. Then mix in a third of the milk mixture. Continue mixing in the remaining dry and wet ingredients alternately, ending with the dry. Mix until well combined and smooth, but don't overmix. Grease and flour a standard-size muffin tin. Scoop enough batter into each tin so that the top of the batter is even with the rim of the cup, about 1/2 cup. (A #16 ice-cream scoop gives you the perfect amount.) Bake the muffins until firm to the touch, 30 to 35 min.

To finish Melt the butter for the dipping mixture. Combine the sugar and cinnamon. When the muffins are just cool enough to handle, remove them from the tin, dip them into or brush them all over with the melted butter, and then roll them in the cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar or plain sugar

Vanilla glaze recipe
4 tbsp butter softened
2 1/2 - 3 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3-6 tbsp whole milk
mix the butter and sugar together with hand or stand mixer, add the vanilla and the milk a tablespoon at a time until you get the consistency you want.
For the chocolate variation add in 4 oz of melted chocolate either semi sweet or bittersweet. Can be bar chocolate or chips and add to the vanilla glaze


MY NOTES on the recipe: I baked them for about 25 min in my oven. I am thinking my oven runs a little hotter but my little thermometer I had inside my oven broke so I have to get a new one. I checked them at 25 min and they were done. I didn't want to over bake since these are denser and  drier than cupcakes to begin with.  I also made my vanilla glaze a touch too runny and I think clear vanilla extract would be better so it stays a whiter color. I dipped the vanillas first then added the rest to the melted chocolate. The chocolate got pretty stiff it was more like a frosting than glaze. I found a recipe that mentioned keeping the glaze over a pan of hot water ( sort of like a double boiler) to keep it more glaze like and easier to dip. The taste is awesome though!