Every year on Shrove Tuesday my kids and I make homemade doughnuts, ditch most of the schoolwork and have my parents over to eat doughnuts, drink coffee and play cards. Since I only make doughnuts once a year I’m always looking for a great recipe (but never test more than one a year), I’ve found a few I liked, but I think I like this one the best. It’s from Pioneer Woman (of course it is, PW never lets you down). Check out her post, she takes the best pictures of things, I love, love, love the Pioneer Woman. These were straightforward as far as making doughnuts go. Put all the ingredients in the mixer. Mix it up, throw it in the fridge overnight. Roll and cut in the morning, let them rise then deep fry them, throw them in some glaze and eat them up.
I couldn’t find my kitchen aid dough hook, so I pulled out my other mixer. Which, frankly handles dough way better than the kitchen aid anyway. This mixer is a Bosch Universal, and if you want to make 6 loaves of whole-wheat bread at once without breaking a sweat or burning out a motor, this is the machine for you. That said, I really don’t use it as an every day mixer. I may just be falling in love with it all over again though. This mixer is much more powerful than a KA, so I just dumped everything in and let it go for 10 minutes. If you have a KA, you’ll want to follow PW more detailed directions though (probably, I wouldn’t know). Also, through the years I have finally located a donut cutter (it was at Wal-Mart of all places - you can get them at Williams Sonoma too, but who wants to spend that much on something you use once a year?) If you don’t have one, go with PW.
I did the deep frying in my dutch oven (beautiful thing that it is, note how it matches my backsplash and gives me little thrills of happiness when I use it), this required millions of gallons of oil, so I was forced to call my impending guests and ask them to bring some with them because of my lack of planning. Apparently that’s the kind of hostess I am. You can get away with this kind of thing, though when your guest is your mom. One quick note: When you cover them with a towel make it a dry one, not wet (and never a terry cloth towel, ugh) I used a dry flour sack and a damp flour sack, and the wet one stuck to the doughnuts and I had to deflate them all pulling it off. Those doughnuts were noticeably less puffy than the rest.
This dough is sticky, don’t be shocked. It will be fine, don’t add more flour.
This is the dough ready to be rolled and cut, and this is what a doughnut cutter looks like.
Rolling and cutting.
Doughnuts going in for a rise. After the rise.
Frying on one side. All done frying.
Glazing the doughnuts.
All done and ready to eat.
Home Made Doughnuts
from thepioneerwoman.com
printable recipe
Ingredients
- Doughnuts
- 1-⅛ cup Whole Milk, Warm
- ¼ cups Sugar
- 2-¼ teaspoons (one Package) Instant Or Active Dry Yeast
- 2 whole Large Eggs, Beaten
- 1-¼ stick Unsalted Butter, melted
- 4 cups All-purpose Flour
- ¼ teaspoons Salt or 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- Canola Oil for frying
- GLAZE
- 3 cups Powdered Sugar
- ½ teaspoons Salt
- ½ teaspoons Vanilla
- ½ cups Cold Water Or Milk ( I used water because someone had used all the milk)
Preparation Instructions
To Make the Dough:1. Make sure milk is nice and warm, but not overly hot.
2. Add sugar to milk. Stir to dissolve. 3. Add yeast into a small bowl.
4. Pour milk/sugar mixture over yeast. Stir gently, then let sit for 10 minutes.
5. Melt butter in separate bowl until butter is almost melted. Stir to finish melting so butter won’t be overly hot.
6. Add beaten eggs to melted butter, stirring constantly to make sure the butter’s not too hot for the eggs.
7. Add the egg/butter mixture to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook.
8. With the mixer on 3 or medium-low speed, pour in the yeast mixture.
9. Allow the dough hook to stir this mixture for a couple of minutes, making sure it’s thoroughly combined.
10. With the mixer still going, add helpings of the flour mixture in 1/4 to 1/2 cup increments until all the flour is gone.
11. Stop the mixer, scrape the bowl, then turn the mixer on the same speed for five whole minutes.
12. After five minutes, stop the mixer and scrape the bottom of the bowl.
13. Turn on the mixer for 30 seconds.
Or: instead of steps 1-13 just put it all in the mixer and let it go for 10 minutes and don’t worry about the rest.
14. Turn off the mixer and allow the dough to sit in the bowl undisturbed for 10 minutes.
15. After 10 minutes, transfer dough to a lightly oiled bowl. Toss the dough to coat, then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place straight in the fridge.
16. Refrigerate dough for at least 8 hours, or overnight.
To Make the Doughnuts:
1. Remove bowl from fridge and turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface.
2. Roll out to 1/4 to 1/3-inch thickness.
3. Using a 3-inch cutter, cut as many rounds as you can, then roll out remaining dough and cut as much as you can, etc.
4. Cut holes out of each round using a 1 1/2-inch cutter. Or use a doughnut cutter.
5. Place both doughnuts and holes on a floured baking sheet, or a silpat lined cookie sheet.
6. Cover with large tea towel and place in a warm place in your kitchen; I put it in the oven that had been heated to warm. Also, don’t use wet tea towels, they will stick and deflate your doughnuts.
7. Allow doughnuts to rise undisturbed for at least 1 hour; 1 hour 15 minutes if necessary. Doughuts should be visibly puffier and appear to be airy.
To Fry the Dougnuts
1. Heat plenty of canola oil in a large pot until the temperature reaches 375 to 380 degrees—do not let it get hotter than 380 degrees! 375 is ideal; keep the thermometer in the pan to continually monitor.
2. One to two at a time, gently grab doughnuts and ease them into the hot oil. Allow them to cook 1 minute on each side; they will brown very quickly.
3. Remove doughnuts from the oil with a slotted spoon, allowing all oil to drip off.
4. Place doughnut immediately on several layers of paper towels. Count to five, then flip it over onto a clean part of the paper towels. Count to five, then flip it over again; the purpose, obviously, is to drain as much grease as possible before it soaks into the doughnut.
5. Repeat with remaining doughnuts and holes. The holes will cook more quickly than the doughnuts; about 30 seconds per side.
6. Allow doughnuts to slightly cool.
To Glaze
1. Mix all glaze ingredients in a bowl until completely smooth.
2. One by one, dip doughnuts into the glaze until halfway submerged. (Note: completely submerge doughnut holes, then remove with slotted spoon.)
4. Remove from glaze, then turn right side up on a cooling rack over a cookie sheet (to catch dripping glaze.)
5. Serve warm if possible, or room temperature.
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