February 27, 2011

Homemade Jelly Donuts. Enough Said.


Last year, Williams-Sonoma was pushing the donut thing hard in their catalog, and I fell sucker. I became obsessed with the idea of making homemade donuts.

I love donuts. Glazed donuts. Cake donuts. Chocolate frosted donuts. Jelly donuts. Donut holes. Dunkin Donuts. Gas station donuts. They fall into the sweet white carb-y camp that I’m a huge fan of.

But we didn’t have a deep fryer, or an candy thermometer, or a donut cutter, so I didn’t get very far in my homemade donut quest.

But for a few months, every time the catalog would come and those donuts were featured, I salivated.

I tried to convince Zach to put a $400 deep fryer on our wedding registry, he thought I was nuts, I gave up, got married, and forgot about donuts for a little while. But the whole thing came back to me a few weeks ago when I was at Paper Source and came across this cute donut patterned paper.



Enough is enough, I said to myself!! I control my own destiny. If I want homemade donuts, I can make that happen!! And so I did.

I bought a cute little donut cutter. I bought a candy thermometer. And I bought a donut cookbook.

We had friends over for brunch today, and I decided this was going to be the day that donuts would make their debut in this household. But since it involved dough (which you know I have issues with from time to time), I got cold feet, and did a test run on Friday night with Vanilla Glazed Donuts from cookbook Donuts by Elinor Klivans. Pretty good. Good enough to make for company, I decided.



But boy oh boy, did it get better. I decided in addition to the standard glazed this morning, I’d try the Jelly-Filled Donuts in Klivans's book too.

And they were rock-star.

Okay, so there are some things that I think are actually not better homemade (pizza, for one). I was worried that jelly donuts would also fall into this camp. Not so. Homemade jelly donuts are better than the professional version. I don’t think most bakeries use Bon Maman raspberry jam to fill them.

These jelly donuts were carefully fried (albeit a slight tad undercooked in the very middle, but I can fix this next time, and these lovely friends that came over like things not completely baked all the way, so score). They were lovingly rolled in a big plate of sugar. They were carefully given slits, and then blindly pumped of raspberry jam. (It was hard to know exactly how much jam I was putting into these donuts, so some had quite a bit of jam). But no one complained.

Thank god I only made six of them, because if we still had some right now, I’d be having one with a fresh cup of coffee as we speak.


Jelly-Filled Donuts (Adapted slightly from Elinor Klavins’s Donuts cookbook)

Canola oil for deep frying
Yeast donut dough (below)
2/3 cup Bon Maman raspberry jam
½ cup sugar

Yeast Donut Dough:

¾ cup whole milk
3 tbsp unsalted butter
3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1/3  cup sugar
½ tsp salt
1 package quick-rise yeast
2 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat milk and butter over medium heat until butter is melted and temperature is 125 degrees. Stir.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix together 2 ½ cups flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Pour in milk and butter; mix on medium speed until well incorporated. Add eggs and vanilla and beat about 2 minutes, until full incorporated. Add remaining ¾ cup flour and mix about 1 minute longer.

Dough will be sticky, but place in new bowl, cover with a clean dish towel, and let rise in warm place for about 1 ¼ hours or until well risen. Use dough right away.


Jelly-Filled donuts:

Flour a decent-sized working surface, and roll dough out until about ½ inch thick.

Use a drinking glass about 3 inches wide to cut out rounds of dough. Place cut-outs onto oiled baking sheet. Cover donuts with clean dish towel and let rise in warm place for about 45 minutes.

Fill a large and deep cast-iron pot (such as Le Creuset) with 2 inches of canola oil. Heat on high until oil reaches 360 degrees on a candy thermometer. Keep and eye on it and adjust heat as necessary to keep it at 360.

Carefully place 3 donuts at a time in the oil, and let fry for about 2 minutes or until the bottom side gets golden. Flip over (a fork works well to do this), and let cook another minute or so, until both sides are golden brown.

Remove from oil and place on paper towel lined baking sheet. Repeat with remaining donuts.

While donuts are still warm, but cool enough to touch, roll in sugar to coat well.

Take a sharp knife, and cut a small slit into the donut. Using a pastry bag with a metal tip, pipe in about 2 teaspoons of jam into the middle.

Serve immediately.

Makes 15 donuts.

2 comments:

  1. These look absolutely delicious! Now I want donuts as my Monday after work snack!

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  2. Very brave of you to make doughnuts. I don't know why but this seems intimidating to me. Nice blog!

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