Homemade Cake Doughnuts / Donuts

I am not a big fan of donuts. In fact I can't even remember the last time I ate a donut. But a friend of mine found this recipe on Bakerella's site ( a site I am a HUGE fan of) and tried with much success. So I printed the recipe to try myself. I am not one for eating anything deep fried since I try to live as healthy as possible (  I do sample my recipes but send the rest with the hubby to work. Life is about moderation afterall!) and I wanted to make oven baked donuts instead of frying but I don't have a donut pan and I really couldn't wait the 3-4 weeks for one to get shipped to me so I went the way of the deep fry. I was really scared to have a giant pot of hot oil on my stove but surprisingly it was a lot easier than I thought.

Started out melting the butter. I prefer melting it in my stainless steel measuring cup over low heat on my stove than in my microwave. I have been known to blow up sticks of butter and that is a giant greasy mess to clean up.

All my ingredients set to go

The batter is very sticky so I chilled for an hour in my fridge to make it more manageable to roll out

I love using my silicone bake mats for rolling out doughs, fondant etc. You only need to use a little bit of flour so you don't end up making your batter tough with all that extra flour. I also didn't have a donut cutter so I used a tuna can ( cleaned of course) and a small fondant circle cutter. I rolled the dough to 1/4 inch thickness like the recipe stated but the donuts came out really small. I think 1/2 inch would have been much better. I made a few 1/2 inch and they came out looking more like the donuts you get in a bakery. 

Here we go. Scary hot oil part

Not getting splattered like I thought I would be

They first sink to the bottom 

then pop right up to the surface. After a minute I flipped them over.

getting nice and golden

first two donuts I have ever made and first two items I have ever deep fried. I'm not so scared of the oil after all

 The recipe states it makes 12 donuts and 12 holes. I made like 30. I think because I made them 1/4 inch. They were good just the 1/2 inch size probably would have yielded 12

I dipped half the donuts in chocolate glaze and half in vanilla glaze.  Topped with toasted coconut, macadamia nuts, chocolate sprinkles and rainbow sprinkles

You can see that these are kinda "skinny" donuts

the "fatter" one I made. Cut with the dough rolled 1/2 inch. Perfect size

YUM!!!

Home made Cake Doughnuts/Donuts ( depending on how you spell them!)

recipe adapted from Bakerella

Slightly Dry Cake Doughnuts
4.5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

• Sift flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt in a bowl and set aside.
• Beat eggs in a medium bowl until frothy. Add sugar and continue beating until combined.
• In another bowl, combine melted butter, milk and vanilla.
• Add the milk mixture to the egg mixture and stir until combined.
• Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture stir until combined.
• Chill the dough for about 60 minutes to make it easier to work with. (Ha!)
• Generously flour your work surface and roll dough out about 1/2 inch thick. Use a silicone bake mat if you have one.
• Use a doughnut cutter or two circle cutters (1 and 3 inch) to cut out shapes.
• Heat about 2 quarts oil (about 3 inches deep) in a large, heavy pot to about about 360 degrees. Use a candy/deep fry thermometer to monitor the heat.
• Fry 1-2 doughnuts at a time about a minute on each side. (I didn’t actually time this, but it wasn’t too long)
• Remove and place on a paper towel-lined tray.
• When cool, sprinkle powdered sugar or dip them in a vanilla glaze.
• Makes 12 doughnuts and 12 doughnut holes. Approximately

)
Vanilla glaze
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 Tbsp butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
3-5 Tbsp milk

• With a mixer, mix sugar and butter.
• Add vanilla
• Add milk one tablespoon at a time until you reach the desired consistency.
• To make chocolate glaze melt and cool bittersweet or semi sweet chocolate and add to leftover vanilla. Probably about 1 cup or so. I didn't measure the exact amount.