Doughnuts

‘Tis the season for sufganyiot! Because I am afraid of deep frying, I haven’t made *real* doughnuts more than once or twice before in my life, but today seemed fitting. I have a severe weak spot for most any kind of doughnuts, and especially for filled doughnuts. In our childhood we never had bagels, but we often had doughnuts from the local shops. Bakersfield had *great* donuts.

When people would bring bagels to work (back in my Silicon Valley days), I would look for the donuts (they were usually there too).

Russia and Georgia adore their პონჩიკი (and so do I). Ich bin ein Berliner!

Fancy doughnuts have become extremely popular now. In Cambridge we had to restrain ourselves from visiting Union Square Donuts too often.

However, Bellows Falls, sadly, is lacking in accessible doughnuts. Some day, I am going to open a doughnut bar & wine shop.

Sometimes I just make these mini donuts in a machine just to satisfy the craving.

In Italy, I have donut molds for baking that I got during lock down to entertain myself:

I gathered my strength today and embarked on these, but tweaked thusly:

• Bloom 1 T active dry yeast in 1/4 c warm coffee with 1/2 t Demerara sugar. If the liquid is the right temp, it will foam up nicely!
• 1 cup AP flour and 1/4 c WW flour, 1 egg, 2 T sugar, 1 T butter, 1 t salt, dash of nutmeg

The dough rose nicely, though it’s very sticky. It was a little messy to roll out so they ended up a bit thicker than they needed to be. I should have gone for bigger circles rather than taller balls, because they puffed even more when they fried. Incidentally, the frying wasn’t bad at all! I did them three at a time in a small cast iron skillet, so used much less oil — just enough so they could float.

Since I love a good trifecta, I made 9 dough-balls, and created three different fillings and glazes:

Maple cream with pecan butter & bourbon glaze

Basic Serious Eats method here. I infused 1/4 c maple syrup in 1/4 c cream and 1/2 c milk

• 2 T brown sugar
• 2 T starch
• 1/8 t salt + ground fenugreek
• 2 egg yolks (ugh, now I have to make something with the whites…,)
• 1 T butter

Frangipane with blackberry & apple glaze

Mix all this together (note that I used mascarpone instead of eggs, to avoid a raw egg situation).

• 3 T soft butter
• 1/2 c powdered sugar
• 1 T corn starch
• 1/2 c almond meal
• 1/8 t salt
• 1 1/2 T mascarpone
• 3/4 t amaretto
• 3/4 t coffee liqueur

Orange curd with pistachio & lemon glaze

Ina Garten’s method is good, but in this iteration I stirred in ice-cold butter at the end.

• 1 egg
• 1 T corn starch
• 1/8 t salt
• 1/4 c sugar with orange & lemon zest
• 1/2 c orange juice
• 2 T blood orange liqueur (surprised Ina doesn’t add this herself)
• 2 T cold butter

For the glazes I mixed a few drops of whatever with 1 T powdered sugar. The pistachio liqueur and lemon juice version came out the best. The blackberry jam was from a friend and I only had the barest remnants left in the jar, and when I added my apple syrup, it ended up very thin. The pecan-bourbon version was way too forward on the bourbon which unfortunately upstaged the magnificent maple creme.

Results of our Vermont taste test group confirmed the Orange with Pistachio was the best all around. The glazes didn’t really add much and they detracted a lot, so next time I think I’ll leave them out. And I have plenty of fillings left to try again now 🙂