sweet and pea

Despite my love for them, I have always been a bit intimidated by the thought of making my own doughnuts. Something that delicious must be hard to make, I reasoned. After all, why would there be a doughnut shop on every corner if they were easy to make?

Yeast raised or cake, fried or baked, filled or glazed, doughnuts are versatile enough to take on any flavour. My absolute favourite is the lemon meringue doughnut from a local coffee shop. It’s a pillowy yeast raised doughnut filled with creamy lemon curd and toped with a mountain of sweet meringue.

But for my first foray into doughnut making I decided to keep things simple and make a plain cinnamon sugar doughnut, though I did add chopped fresh cherries to half the batch when I saw how easy it was.

The recipe below is adapted from Pitt Cue co. Hope you enjoy!

Makes: 25-30 Doughnuts

Prep Time: 30 minute

Cook Time: 90 minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup warm milk

1 tablespoon active dried yeast

3 tablespoons white sugar

1 cup butter

5 free range eggs

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

3 3/4 cups flour

oil for frying

1 cup chopped cherries (optional)

White sugar and cinnamon for dusting

Steps:

1. Place warm milk, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and yeast into a bowl and let stand for 15 minutes
2. In a mixing bowl beat butter and remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar until fluffy
3. Mix eggs into butter mixture one at a time. This works best if both eggs and butter are room temperature. If the eggs and butter will not combine, don’t worry, the dough will still come together in the end
4. Add yeast mixture to butter mixture and stir to combine
5. Add flour and salt and beat until combined
6. Cover dough with cling film or a damp cloth and refrigerate overnight
7. When ready to begin cooking roll the dough out on a floured surface to a 1 inch thickness,
8. (Optional: If you want to add cherries, sprinkle half of the chopped fresh cherries onto the rolled out dough, fold over and roll again. Repeat with the remaining cherries then cut out circles)
9. Using a cookie cutter or wine glass press into 2-3 inch circles. Using a smaller (1/2 inch) cookie cutter, or the top of a water bottle, press out the middle of the circle. You can cook the ‘hole’ too
10. Allow the doughnuts to rise for 20-30 minutes. While the dough rises heat 1/2 inch oil in a deep, heavy pan. Heat the oil as low as possible while still getting an instant sizzle when you touch a piece of dough to the surface
11. Drop 2-4 doughnuts and doughnut holes into the hot oil and cook for 2 minutes on each side. Immediately dredge the hot doughnut in a mixture of white sugar and cinnamon (1 cup sugar to 1 tablespoon cinnamon)
12. Place sugared doughnut on a cooling rack (or just eat it!)