Baked Doughnuts II
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When I went to Wilton tent sale, the item I was most excited about was the baked doughnut pan. I had made baked doughnuts in the past, but used a recipe where I had to punch out the doughnuts using two different sized cookie cutters. They were a lot of work, and these pans seemed like an easy workaround!
The pans lived up to my expectations and made the doughnuts much easier to make. But while they look super cute, they aren’t very good. In fact, they’re bland, spongy, and just all around eh. Usually when I bring stuff into work, people are constantly saying how good the treat is. With these, everyone said they looked really good. That’s a bad sign!
Ingredients
2 cups cake flour, sifted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (I omitted this)
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 Tbsp butter, melted
Preparation
Preheat oven to 425°F. Spray the doughnut pan with nonstick cooking spray.
Sift together cake flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Whisk in buttermilk, eggs, and butter and beat until just combined. Fill each doughnut cup until about 2/3 full. (Use a pastry bag if you have one; I wish I had made my life easier.)
Bake 7-9 minutes, or until the top of the donuts spring back when touched. Cool in pan for about 4-5 minutes before removing from pan. Complete donuts with either a dusting of powdered sugar, glaze, or cinnamon-sugar topping.
Glaze Ingredients
1/2 cup chocolate chips
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons corn syrup
2-3 teaspoons hot water
Glaze Preparation
Microwave on 50% power for about 1 minute, stirring in-between, until melted. Stir in 1 teaspoon hot water until the glaze has thickened. Add another teaspoon hot water if the glaze is too thick.
Recipes from Wilton doughnut pan packaging.
Chocolate Chip Scones
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Last week I made these cupcakes for a friend’s bridal shower and had some buttermilk leftover. Before learning I could freeze buttermilk (who knew?), I made the buttermilk cake squares (yum!), then this scone recipe showed up in my Google Reader (thanks The Food Librarian!) and boom, leftover buttermilk be gone.
I followed the drop scone directions–scoop and bake–rather than shape into a circle and cut into wedges. The scooping was easy and the scones all came out around the same size. The end result was slightly crispy on the outside and soft and moist on the inside. They weren’t as dense as the scones I’m used to, but they were definitely delicious and super easy to make.
Photos of the process here.
Ingredients
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) chilled unsalted butter, diced
1 teaspoon (packed) grated lemon peel (I omitted this)
3/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup chilled buttermilk
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Glaze: Milk and 2 T sugar
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Line with Silpat or parchment two baking sheets.
- In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- In a small mixing bowl or your measuring cup, blend together buttermilk, egg yolk and vanilla. Set aside.
- Cut up cold butter into small pieces and add to the flour mixture. (If you are adding the lemon zest, add here). Using your fingertips, rub in butter until the mixture is sandy or like rice grains. (Mine looked like sand, not rice grains.)
- Mix in the mini chocolate chips
- Pour buttermilk mixture over the flour mixture and mix until dough comes together. Do not overmix. Dough will be moist and soft.
- If you want to make triangle scones, gather the dough and press out on floured surface into an 8-inch round. Cut into 6 wedges.
- If you want to make drop scones, use a scooper to scoop dough onto lined baking sheets.
- Brush tops of scones with milk and sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes until golden brown. (Mine took around 15 minutes.)
I got about 20 scones using a small cookie scoop.
Recipe from Bon Appétit via The Food Librarian.
Baked Doughnuts
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As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never been a huge fan of doughnuts. Growing up, we ate bagels or cereal for breakfast, and doughnuts were thought of as a dessert. When I went away to college, doughnuts were available everywhere, and when I entered the working world, I noticed they were a regular early morning treat. I still never got into them, mainly because of the greasy feeling in my mouth and the heavy blah I would feel in my stomach after eating them.
So when I had a random craving for doughnuts (I blame the Food Network), I Googled recipes for baked doughnuts and figured I’d give them a shot. Since I was trapped in my neighborhood this morning thanks to the LA Marathon, and the weather had finally cooled down enough to even think about turning on my oven, it seemed like the perfect day.
I halved the recipe, because I was afraid I would either a) not like them or b) like them, and didn’t want to have too many, either way. The process was fairly easy although time consuming, as are most yeast breads. The dough came together really nicely using the dough hook, and was easy to work with as well. Since I don’t have a doughnut cutter (oddly, there is such a thing), I used a 2-inch biscuit cutter, and the bottom of a pastry bag tip to cut out the inner circle. You can improvise–before I finally got around to buying a biscuit cutter, I used a drinking glass. Just look around your kitchen, you’ll find circular things.
Because I’m used to fried doughnuts, I was expecting these to be heavy, but was happily surprised to discover they were light and airy. The dips in butter and cinnamon-sugar finished the doughnuts off perfectly, and I can definitely see myself bringing these to a friend’s house–for brunch or dessert.
And don’t forget about the bonus doughnut holes. Enjoy!
Photos of the process here.
Ingredients
1 1/3 cups warm milk, 95 to 105 degrees (divided)
1 packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
2 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
5 cups all-purpose flour
A pinch or two of nutmeg, freshly grated (I omitted this)
1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
Cinnamon-Sugar Coating Ingredients
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Preparation
Place 1/3 cup of the warm milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir in the yeast and set aside for five minutes. Be sure your milk isn’t too hot or it will kill the yeast. Stir the butter and sugar into the remaining cup of warm milk and add it to the yeast mixture. With a fork, stir in the eggs, flour, nutmeg, and salt – just until the flour is incorporated. With the dough hook attachment of your mixer beat the dough for a few minutes at medium speed. If your dough is overly sticky, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. If it’s too dry, add more milk a bit at a time. You want the dough to pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl and eventually become supple and smooth. Turn it out onto a floured counter-top, knead a few times (the dough should be barely sticky), and shape into a ball.
Transfer the dough to a buttered (or oiled) bowl, cover, put in a warm place, and let rise for an hour or until the dough has roughly doubled in size.
Punch down the dough and roll it out 1/2-inch thick on your floured countertop. If you don’t have a doughnut cutter, use a 2-3 inch cookie cutter to stamp out circles. Transfer the circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet and stamp out the smaller inner circles using a smaller cutter. If you cut the inner holes out any earlier, they become distorted when you attempt to move them. Cover with a clean cloth and let rise for another 45 minutes.
Bake in a 375 degree oven until the bottoms are just golden, 8 to 10 minutes–start checking around 8. While the doughnuts are baking, place the butter in a medium bowl. Place the sugar and cinnamon in a separate bowl.
Remove the doughnuts from the oven and let cool for just a minute or two. Dip each one in the melted butter and toss in the sugar bowl.
Makes 1 1/2 – 2 dozen medium doughnuts. (And just as many doughnut holes!)
Recipe from 101 Cookbooks.
