July 20, 2013 - Yeasted Doughnuts - Sugar, Cinnamon Sugar, Vanilla Glaze & Chocolate Glaze

I was really enjoying the Yeast Breads & Rolls section of the book, so I went for another recipe I had been eyeing up for a while....Yeasted Doughnuts.  I am a doughnut LOVER, so of course I was all about trying this recipe.  And, of course, I figured why not make all of the variations at once and have a variety! 

Let me also just say, my sister brother in law and nephew were staying over for the weekend, so I was not planning to eat all of these myself (although after tasting the finished product, I very well could have)!

Like with most of the recipes in this section of the book, I had been avoiding making these.  For some reason, I had this weird thought in my head that anything yeast based that required kneading and rising must mean its hard to make.  I couldn't be more wrong, especially with this recipe. 

Once the dough was mixed up it was a matter of letting it rise for a couple of hours.




After the dough had risen, I turned it out on the counter, rolled it out and cut the shapes out.  Not owning a doughnut cutter I used different size cookie cutters, which worked fine, maybe just a little inconsistent on sizes but who cares about that, right?

 

I had decided to try out a couple of shapes and sizes.  I cut holes out of some, left some whole, and then there were the small doughnut holes.  Once they were cut, I let them rise a bit while I heated up my shortening for frying.  After the oil came to temp, in they went in nice little batches.

 

 

This process was a little bit tricky for me, having never deep fried anything like this before, so I wanted to make sure the color was right without burning, but that they stayed in long enough to cook through.  Overall, the end products were overall great (only one or two ended up getting a tiny bit of burnt spots on them, but nothing major).  Next, it was time to decide how to top them.  Of course, thinking about the number of recipes I still have to make, I decided to go with all of the variations and cross them all off at one shot!

Regular Sugar Coated...

 

Cinnamon-Sugar Coated....

 

  

Vanilla-Glazed.....

And last, but not least, Chocolate Glazed.

 

Of course, I couldn't stop there.  I decided it would be an awesome idea to make some of the vanilla cream filled.  So I whipped up a quick vanilla cream, got out my pastry tip, and filled about 6 or 7 of the whole donuts with the cream.

 

Let me just say that my kitchen was an absolute train wreck after this afternoon.  I think I used every mixing bowl, mixing utensil and tray I own.  But the end product was so incredibly worth it.  The doughnuts were perfect.  The dough had that slightly sweet yet yeasty taste, not overly heave or dense, and the toppings each added their own special flavor (not to mention the vanilla cream filling).

 

So here we are.  Three months after this journey began, and I have 49 recipes/variations down.  I think so far I am making fairly decent progress, and so far mostly everything has been a decent success (at least no complete failures!).