Homemade Doughnuts!

So I did attempt to make these doughnuts in time for the Saturday brunch, but due to lack of planning they were not in fact ready until after the brunch was already over. Sad for me since a) I did not get the joy of feeding homemade doughnuts to my friends and b) these doughnuts are living in my fridge, taking up space, forcing me to eat them on a daily basis! Curses!

I used this recipe from 101cookbooks. The great thing about these doughnuts is they really can sit in the fridge (well-wrapped) for at least 3-5 days! You can take out as many as you want to eat that evening or morning, let them rise, and either bake or fry them. I am also experimenting with freezing part of them and rethawing. More news to come on that. Update: it works great!

While these are "doughnuts", be warned that they are not a glorious cakey variety, but more like a bread. I would venture to add a bit more nutmeg to the dough and substitute some honey for the sugar next time.Also, they can puff up quite a lot and end up becoming a doughnut bun (e.g. holeless) so make sure to watch them when they are rising. The doughnut holes themselves are not very good baked and dipped - the cinnamon sugar to dough ratio is too high, so I recommend re-rolling all the holes together and cutting out more doughnuts. I estimate in this manner, one would produce 24-30 doughnuts. I ended up using a clean aluminum can from some chickpeas to make the outer doughnut ring and a shot glass to make the doughnut hole.

If you bake them, I recommend dipping in salted butter, as well as adding sea salt to the cinnamon/sugar mixture. Otherwise it was too much sweet on not enough dough. Another delicious result was obtained by dipping them in melted bittersweet chocolate and then rolling them in the cinnamon sugar/mixture. Or a chocolate dunk on both sides, followed by dunking in chopped pistachios.

To fry them, use about 1/4" inch canola oil in a cast iron pan on medium high heat. Fry to golden brown on both sides. Let cool briefly and then dip in desired toppings.