Baked Doughnuts
If you’re looking for a super sweet and delicious snack idea to bring to your next knit night or work meeting, try this recipe from Heidi over at 101 Cookbooks for baked doughnuts. Unlike their deep-fried counterparts, baked doughnuts get the privilege of being healthier without the flavor sacrifice. And the texture? Amazing. Think cinnamon-roll-meets-doughnut.
To try these homemade baked doughnuts at home, follow the recipe below, or visit Heidi’s site. Heidi recommends that you serve these almost as soon as they’re out of the oven, but I find that they are just as good, if not better, the next day. In fact, if I know I’m going to have them around for more than a day or two, I’ll store them in the refrigerator in an airtight container, and pop them in the microwave for a few seconds to take the chill off before devouring with my morning coffee.
Baked Doughnuts from 101 Cookbooks
Makes 1 ½ – 2 dozen.
• 1 1/3 cups lukewarm milk, divided
• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• A pinch or two of nutmeg, freshly grated
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
Place 1/3 cup milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir in the yeast to dissolve and set aside for five minutes.
Stir the butter and sugar into the remaining cup of warm milk and add it to the yeast mixture. With a fork, stir in the eggs, flour, nutmeg, and salt just until the flour is incorporated. With the dough hook attachment of your mixer beat the dough for a few minutes at medium speed.
If your dough is overly sticky, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. If it’s too dry, add a little more milk. You want the dough to pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl and become supple and smooth. Turn it out onto a floured counter-top, knead a few times (the dough should be barely sticky), and shape into a ball.
Transfer the dough to a buttered (or oiled) bowl. Cover with a damp tea towel, place in a warm place, and let rise for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size.
Punch down the dough and roll it out 1/2-inch thick on your floured countertop. If you don’t have a doughnut cutter, use a wide mouth ball jar to stamp out circles. Transfer the circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet and stamp out the smaller inner circles using a smaller cutter (I used a tall shot glass to stamp out the holes). Cover with a clean, damp tea towel, and let rise for another 45 minutes.
Bake in a 375 degree oven until the bottoms are just golden (8 to 10 minutes). While the doughnuts are baking, place the butter in a medium bowl. In a separate medium bowl, place the sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.
Remove the doughnuts from the oven and let cool for just a minute or two. Dip each one in the melted butter and a quick toss in the sugar bowl.
Store coated doughnuts in the refrigerator in an airtight container. To serve, pop in the microwave for 15-20 seconds until just slightly warm. Alternately, you can store uncoated doughnuts in the freezer in an airtight container for up to a month.
To package my doughnuts, I used large tin-tie bags which I then sealed with chocolate colored rectangle labels in the style Bordeaux.
Helpful Links
- Tin-Tie Bags • I chose the large size in White.
- Rectangle Labels • I chose the “Bourdeaux” style in Chocolate.
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Lindsay is a writer/blogger from Oregon who loves crafting, cooking, gardening, and simple living. You can find her writing about all of this and more on her blog A Wooden Nest.
I too am obsessed with canning and making homemade goodies. We grow a large garden, but most of my ingredients come from my neighbors and every year I try something new. I would like to try the onion jam and would like to know if I can preserve it for future use. I do a craft show later in the year and would like to have it then.
thanks
Hi Linda,
Unfortunately, onion jam isn’t a great candidate for long term food preservation because onions are a low acid food. That’s why all the onion jam recipes you come across on the web generally only recommend refrigerator storage for up to one or two weeks. Here is a good post over on the Doris and Jilly blog with a good discussion on the topic that I highly suggest: http://dorisandjillycook.com/2009/12/17/canning-onion-confit
Hope that helps,
Lindsay