doughnuts (fried)

Sometime in February 2009, my cousin (HL) and I were chatting online after work. I told her that I was thinking of baking doughnuts (instead of making fried doughnuts) but I was not sure about the type of baking pan. She told me about the Kaiser doughnut pan which can be bought online from amazon.com. As I am not comfortable purchasing things on the internet, I decided to look for a similar doughnut pan at our stores here.

In the meantime, I bought a doughnut cutter from the supermarket. It is made of plastic and it is very lightweight. I decided to try my hand at frying doughnuts.

INGREDIENTS (for the doughnut)

1/2 cup warm milk
7g instant dry yeast
4 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup castor sugar
2 eggs
oil (for frying)
INGREDIENTS (for the glaze and toppings)

1 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp milk
chocolate rice
cinnamon sugar
rainbow sprinkles

METHOD

1. Mix the warm milk with the yeast and set aside for 10 minutes.

2. Sift the flour, salt and cinnamon powder in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Heat the water with the butter and sugar until well mixed. Set aside until it is almost cool. Add in the yeast mixture and stir thoroughly.

4. Add the eggs (one at a time) and mix well.

5. Fold in the flour and knead for 10 minutes.

6. Place the dough in a greased bowl. Cover with a moist cloth and leave the dough to rise for about 1 hour or until double in size.

7. Knead the dough again and roll out the dough into 10 mm thickness.

8. Cut the dough using the doughnut cutter.

9. Place the doughnuts onto a greased baking tray. Cover with a moist towel and let the doughnuts rise for about 1 hour or until double in size.

10. Heat oil in a frying pan and fry the doughnuts until they are golden brown.

11. Place the fried doughnuts onto a paper towel to drain off excess oil.

12. Decorating the doughnut:-

(a) Sprinkle the entire doughnut with cinnamon sugar.

(b) For glazed doughnuts, mix the icing sugar and milk in a bowl and stir thoroughly. Dip one side of the doughnut into the glaze until half the doughnut is immersed in the glaze. Remove the doughnut from the bowl of glaze and decorate the glazed side of the doughnut with chocolate rice or rainbow sprinkles. Place the decorated doughnut onto a rack to drain off excess glaze.

TIPS

1. Instead of kneading the dough manually, I use my electric mixer with the dough hook.

2. When rolling out the dough, make sure that the board is floured and your hands are dusted with flour so that the dough will not stick to the rolling pin.

3. If you have leftover cinnamon doughnuts and wish to warm it up another day to eat, simply warm it in an oven preheated to 140 degrees celsius for 5 minutes.