Birthday Donuts!



"Time to make the donuts!" My foray into donutry has begun!!

For years, Ted has told me about his most favorite dessert evarrrrr, that apparently was "the perfect combination of salty and sweet, crunchy and soft, hot and cold" - he's quite the dessert connoisseur, you see! So for his birthday this year, since we didn't find a tasty dessert at the restaurant we went to, I suggested we make this very fancy dessert he's longed for for so long! It will be: fresh homemade cake donuts with cinnamon and sugar, topped with buttered toffee pecan pieces and buttered pecan ice cream. YUM!!

We cheated and bought the ice cream and nuts - if we tried REALLY HARD, we could've made the ice cream, but meh. This is going to be a quickie fancy dessert!



Ingredients for Donuts (yields approximately 12 small donuts)

1/2 C sugar
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1/8 C unsalted butter, melted
1/2 C milk
1 1/2 C flour (plus a little more if the dough is sticky)
Oil for frying
Cinnamon sugar


How to:

  1. Mix together sugar, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg.
  2. Add egg, milk, and melted butter. Beat well.
  3. Slowly add in the flour, starting with 1 1/2 C. The dough should be soft and sticky but firm enough to handle. If you feel like you need more, add up to 1/2 C more flour. It will be rolled out later, so firmer than cookie dough!
  4. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least one hour.
  5. Remove dough from the fridge and begin heating about 1" of oil in a large skillet (medium to medium high heat works best! As you can see in the pics below, the original batch was much too hot, but round 2 was perfect!)
  6. Work with just a little at a time - we made 4 in one batch, and 4 the next day, and STILL had about 1/3 of the dough remaining!  Roll it out on a floured surface to about 1/2" thickness. Cut out circles using a donut cutter or biscuit cutter.  We discovered that whole circles (no donut holes) didn't seem to cook all the way through... YES we still ate them (they were tasty!!!) but now we understand why there are holes! The heat distributes more evenly from all sides, so if you can, cut out the holes :)
  7. Gently drop the donuts in the oil in small batches. (I used a spatula to "slide" the donuts into the oil - I was really scared of it splashing!! Some of the donuts did not slide well because they were still sticky, and they turned over and looked horribly ugly... BUT!! Some did work! I see why this recipe is so big!!)
  8. Flip them over using tongs (if you have them) as they puff and turn them a few more times as they cook. They will take about 2-3 minutes in total and will be golden brown all over.
  9. Remove them and place them on a plate with paper towels to soak up a bit of the oil.
  10. Cover them with cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar, or whatever toppings you like!
  11. In our case, serve warm with ice cream and crunchy nut topping :)
You can see which donuts were not happily dropped in the oil! This takes practice!!
Next day donuts at proper oil temp!
Covered in powdered sugar, YUM!!
By the way, these really aren't THAT bad for you considering they're fried and full of sugar and other bad for you things - they're only about 3 WW points each! (Without the sugary topping and ice cream and nuts, of course!)

Happy birthday, Ted, I love you!!




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