Glazed Donuts

Today is Great British Bake Off day! Yay! And tonight’s theme is advanced dough and they are making donuts, so I figured today is the best day to post these yummy treats! This isn’t my entry for advanced dough week, I have something else planned for that. These are just to celebrate it being Wednesday aka GBBO day! If you watch tonight’s episode, I’d love to hear your thoughts on who baked well and the choices of star baker and who got sent home!

I love donuts. Who doesn’t love donuts? Are there people in the world that don’t like happiness? Anything is possible I guess! I have made baked donuts before, which were yummy but let’s be honest with ourselves, nothing beats the real fried dough! I’d never made real donuts because frankly I was terrified of all that hot oil, I’m the kind of person that falls UP the stairs so I thought if I was in charge of that much hot oil I’d end up burning my face off somehow. But then Stephanie at The Cozy Cook posted her glazed donuts and everything changed! I was drooling over her photos and just couldn’t resist her literal mountain of donuts and decided to throw caution to the wind and give them a go, after some advice from her!

I am happy to report I did not burn my face off, or burn myself at all. I don’t know what baking god was looking over me that day, but I am grateful! I don’t own a deep fryer so I used a medium saucepan and heated the oil in there, it was pretty tricky trying to keep the oil at the right temperature and it took me at least 10 donuts to figure out the correct temperature and frying length! But, all things considered, my experience with the oil wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be. And now I’m kicking myself for not making donuts before!

The only change I made to Stephanie’s recipe was I made a few different glazes – I made cinnamon, vanilla and chocolate. I bet you can’t guess which glaze was my favourite 😉 And since I didn’t make any changes to the actual donut recipe I can confirm that this recipe makes a literal metric tonne of donuts! The dough just grows and grows, I was pretty sure it was alive! My kitchen was like a scene from that fairytale with the magic porridge pot that keeps cooking porridge until the whole town is covered in porridge “Stop, little dough!”. When cutting out the donut shapes I went for a slightly larger donut because I thought “Oh they won’t grow much more, it’s the second rise” Boy, was I wrong! I ended up with monster donuts, and that combined with the fact I took so many attempts to get the cooking right I didn’t end up with quite as many donuts as Stephanie did. But it was still a lot!! 

Now, the donuts themselves are to die for. They are just the right combination of fluffy and chewy, and they taste amazing! I could have eaten the entire batch I’m sure, if I hadn’t made myself nauseous on testing a billion undercooked donuts beforehand that is! I did manage to shovel a decent amount into my stomach before I sent them off with my mum for her colleagues! 

The glazes are super simple and really yummy too. I slathered my donuts in glaze because I have a real sweet tooth and you can never have enough glaze, can you?! And you want to coat these in the glaze as soon as they’re done frying, so the best way to do it is with a pastry brush so you’re not burning your fingers! Make sure you get both sides covered too

I think I’ve teased you (and myself) with these donuts long enough, time for the recipe! 

 P.S Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Bloglovin’ 🙂

Glazed Donuts

2014-09-23 17:01:38

Yields 48

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Prep Time

3 hr 20 min

Cook Time

1 hr

Total Time

4 hr 20 min

Prep Time

3 hr 20 min

Cook Time

1 hr

Total Time

4 hr 20 min

For the donuts

1. 2 tbsp dried yeast
2. 3/4 cup warm water
3. 2 cups milk
4. 1/2 cup shortening (trex)
5. 2 tsp salt
6. 2/3 cup sugar
7. 1/2 tsp nutmeg
8. 1 tsp cinnamon
9. 4 eggs
10. 7-8 cups flour (plus more for dusting)

For the glazes

1. 7 cups icing sugar
2. 2/3 cup water
3. 1 tsp vanilla
4. 1 tsp cinnamon
5. 2 tbsp cocoa powder

Instructions

1. Mix the yeast with the warm water and set aside to do it's thing
2. Warm the milk in the microwave for 2 minutes
3. Put the shortening in a mixing bowl and pour the hot milk over it, whisk to combine (It will be lumpy, don't worry)
4. Mix the salt, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon together and beat the eggs into it.
5. Add the yeast mixture (which should be foamy, if it isn't your yeast is dead and you need new yeast and start step 1 over. R.I.P yeast.) to the sugar and egg mixture and beat. Add 2 cups of flour and beat until combined
6. Add 2 more cups of flour, beat to combine and then add 2 more and beat to combine. At this point your batter should be forming and you need to gradually add more flour until it forms a smooth dough. I added an extra 1 cup of flour to form my dough, you may need more or less. I used 7 cups in total.
7. Dust a clean work surface with flour and turn the dough out onto it, knead the dough until it is no longer sticky to touch. You may need to sprinkle a little more flour.
8. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl and cover. Leave to rise for 1.5 hours until it has doubled in size.
9. Once risen, turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll until it is about 1 inch thick. Cut out the donut shapes, as close together as possible. I used a round cookie cutter and then the open end of a large piping nozzle for the centre. Transfer donuts to a clean surface.
10. Let them rise for another 1.5 hours
11. Once the donuts are risen, make the glaze. Combine the icing sugar, water and vanilla and mix until smooth. Pour 1/3 of the glaze mixture into another bowl, and another 1/3 into another bowl. Mix the cinnamon into 1/3 of the glaze mixture and the cocoa powder into another 1/3 (you may need to add a tad more water into the cocoa mixture to make smooth). Set aside.
12. Heat about 1 litre of vegetable oil in a medium saucepan (or, if you have one, heat the oil in your deep fryer to 180C/360F) on medium heat until it reaches a temperature of 180C/360F. You will need to keep an eye on the temperature with a candy thermometer as it'll be unstable in a saucepan. You want to keep the oil hot otherwise your dough will soak up the oil, not good.
13. Fry the donuts one at a time until a deep golden brown, about 4 minutes total.
14. Use a pastry brush to coat the donuts in glazes as soon as they're out of the fryer, and transfer to a wire rack.

Notes

1. When you remove donuts from the pan, place on kitchen towel to soak up any extra oil
2. Will keep in an airtight container for 3 days

By Michelle @ Giraffes Can Bake

Adapted from Stephanie @ The Cozy Cook

Adapted from Stephanie @ The Cozy Cook

A Tipsy Giraffe https://www.atipsygiraffe.com/