Go Nuts About Donuts

I am totally addicted with baking and cooking these days.  Despite the fact that I am on Cohen Lifestyle Program, I continued with this passion.  I guess this becomes my outlet for being under controlled food intake.   I may not be able to eat what I bake in full serving but I get to taste a little bite of each before serving it to my kids.  I used to buy those fancy donuts from Krispy Kreme and J.Co but my kids like sugar raised and cinnamon flavoured ones.  Sugar raised and Cinnamon are simpler donut variants but they are priced just like the fancy ones so  I thought of looking for a recipe that resembles the taste of these famous donuts and make them at home.

I found this recipe that somehow resembles the dough of J.Co donuts. Credits to Baking Bee for the recipe.  Its lighter than the 'heavy' Krispy Kreme (which I also tried using another food hack recipe online). My kids love this donut, its fluffly :-)  I stopped buying them donuts and would make fresh ones when they request.

This donut recipe makes use of yeast.  I must admit I am quite intimidated with this ingredient at first but I guess practice makes perfect.  Since yeast is part of the ingredients, even the instant, fast acting ones requires time for the dough to rise so you need to factor that in preparing this sweet treat.

Ingredients:
Dough 1
Bread Flour - 141 g
Instant Yeast - 5 g
Salt - 1.67 g (slightly less than 1/2 Tsp, 1 Tsp salt is approx. 4g)
Water - 100g

Dough 2
Bread Flour - 33 g
Salt - 1.67 g
Milk Powder - 10g
Sugar - 22 g
Eggs - 22 g (1/2 large egg)
Shortening - 21 g

Steps:

Get ready with Dough 1.  Combine yeast, salt  and  bread flour in a mixing bowl.  Make a hole in the middle (like a donut) where you pour the water in.  Mix in medium speed using paddle of a stand mixer. (the Baking Bee knead the dough by hand and it worked)

Cover the bowl with cling wrap and place it in a warm place for 90 minutes.  Your dough will look like this after:

Combine all ingredients in Dough 2 and knead into a dough. You may want to do this few minutes before Dough 1 is well proofed.   Mix Dough 1 and Dough 2 together, cover and rest for another 15 mins.

Using a roller pin, roll dough on a floured surface to 1 cm thick. Rest 10 Mins.  I read that a perfect dough stretches well.  I guess I got my dough right :-)

Using a donut cutter, cut into shapes, place on grease pan and let rest further 10 minutes.   The dough will rise a bit more as shown below.  Make sure you reserve the holes because its fun to munch them later.  I also used it to test fry. 

Deep fry on low flame till light golden brown. The donuts will expand slightly (puff out) during frying. Cool on wire rack or paper towel to drain out oil. I don't have a wire rack so i used paper towels to cool the donuts.  Toss donuts in a bowl of sugar.  I also made cinnamon sugar by combining 1/4 cup of sugar and 4 teaspoons of cinnamon.  I tossed the holes on the cinnamon sugar.  

I also made my own Alcapone donut but with cream cheese frosting instead of the sweet ones that J.Co offers, finished it off with sliced almonds on top.

I did this recipe over and over, tried in simple glaze and chocolate.  I followed Alton Brown's simple glaze recipe from Food network.  I later on added chocolate from the glaze recipe and had chocolate glazed donuts.

My kids and sister could not resist eating one donut after another.  Thanks to this recipe I get to make fresh donuts at home.