Everybody loves donuts, right? They’re tender and warm and sweet. I especially love raised donuts as fresh as I can get them. And recently I started to wonder if I could make my own.
But, I don’t do a lot of deep frying and most donuts are fried.
There’s a couple of reasons for it. I’ve got a small kitchen. It’s messy. It tends to stink up our apartment. And, the biggie is that cooking oil for deep frying gets expensive. You use quite a bit of oil and keeping it until the next time you need it is pretty inconvenient. So I try to come up with other ways of accomplishing the same thing such as sautéing or baking.
But I get a craving every now and then for donuts. And, recently I came across a recipe for baking them. These are raised yeast donuts and they are tasty without the trace of oiliness you get from regular raised donuts. A dozen of these with their holes are a morning treat.
What I do is start the evening before mixing the dough, letting it rise and then cutting out the donuts. The next morning I just take the pans out of the fridge, let them sit out for about an hour to come to room temperature and do their final rise and then pop them in the oven. Here’s the recipe. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Recipe: Baked Donuts with Cinnamon Sugar
Summary: Raised, baked donuts are tender, tasty, sweet and easy to make.
Ingredients
- 1 egg
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup milk, heated to 115 degrees
- 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2½ to 3½ cups unbleached flour, divided, plus more for kneading
- 1 stick butter (4 ounces), at room temperature cut into 1″ cubes
- 1 stick butter (4 ounces), melted
- 1 cup granulated sugar + 2 tablespoons cinnamon, mixed together
Instructions
- Put the yeast, salt and milk in a small bowl, stir and let sit for about 10
minutes. - Put the egg, sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl and thoroughly whisk it together.
- Add in 2 cups of the flour and the yeast mixture. Then mix together with a spoon.
- Add the butter one piece at a time and stir until smooth.
- Now, add the rest of the flour and stir until the dough comes together pulling away from thesides of the bowl. It should be soft and moist, but not sticky.
- Turn the dough out on to a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Keep the board floured and incorporate it into the dough as you knead.
(Knead,turn, knead, flipping about every 3rd or 4th knead). - Form dough in a ball and place in a mixing bowl coated with cooking spray and cover with a damp towel. Let rise until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
- Punch down the dough and roll it out to about ½” thickness.
- Cut out 3″ circles with 1″ holes with a biscuit cutter. (If you don’t have a biscuit or donut cutter, use a 2 1/2-3″ mouth glass and skip cutting out holes).
- Place donuts and holes on a cookie sheet or on separate sheets and cover with plastic wrap. (If you’re going to bake the donuts later, put the pans into the fridge).
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Putthe pans on top of the preheating oven until almost doubled in size, about 25 minutes.
- Then put the pans in the oven. I turn the oven down to 375 as soon as they go in the oven.
- Bake until light golden (blond) in color, 5-8 minutes. While baking, melt the 2nd
stick of butter or margarine and put in aflat bottom bowl then put the cinnamon sugar into another bowl. - Remove the donuts from the oven and take them off the sheets onto cooling racks.
- Dip the hot doughnuts in the melted butter and then coat with the cinnamon-sugar mixture.
- Serve immediately
Preparation time: 1 hour(s) 15 minute(s)
Cooking time: 10 minute(s)
Number of servings (yield): 4
Culinary tradition: USA (Traditional)
My rating 5 stars: ★★★★★ 1 review(s)
A couple of other things. These are really tasty.
If you want a basic glaze for them, just take about a half cup of powdered sugar and put about ½ tablespoon of water or even orange juice in it to moisten and mix thoroughly to a thick glaze. Then drizzle liberally over your donuts. You can even melt chocolate and dip the donuts in it. And you can skip cutting the holes and use a pastry bag and tip to squirt jelly or even pudding inside making your own jelly donuts. Get creative!
The Cheap Bastid Test: If you go to Krispy Kreme or Dunkin’ Donuts or a bakery you’re going to pay $6 or more for a dozen donuts. These cost between $1.75 and $2.00 to make at home. They smell fantastic baking and taste even better. Light and airy and sweet and warm. It doesn’t get any better than that.
And that’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!
Karen Lynn, thank you for your comment. I’m sure that at times you’re like me and wonder if what you write is actually read by anyone and if it has any impact. I enjoyed your theme as well which appears to me to focus on living well by living more simply. I’m just a home cook who likes to eat well and frugally and I’m very glad that you enjoyed those couple of posts. Thanks again. Walt