Daring Baker’s Doughnuts

This month’s challenge, hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up, was doughnuts. I think it was about this time last year we were frying cannoli in oil, and since that didn’t end well, I was a little apprehensive when I read about the doughnuts. As this month became unexpectedly hectic, I wasn’t sure if this challenge would even happen. As a weekend freed up, I decided to tackle the doughnuts!

I chose the yeast doughnuts, since I have never been a fan of cake doughnuts. I think now that I’ve tried yeast doughnuts, I would try cake doughnuts, worth a shot next time!

The recipe called to heat milk, pour over butter to melt.

As that was happening, the yeast activated in warm water. I then split the amounts of milk mixture and yeast, setting aside half to add chocolate to, which ended up an interesting experiment.

Added the milk mixture together with the yeast, then added flour and remaining ingredients. I let the dough rise in an oiled bowl and repeated the process with my chocolate dough experiment.

I was surprised by how much the dough rose, but as I got a late start on the project, I decided to refrigerate both dough's and make the doughnuts the next morning.

The next morning I pulled the dough out of the fridge and let sit for about 2 hours. Then I rolled the dough, cut doughnut shapes with cookie cutter, and let rise while my ‘oil supervisor’ helped get ready to fry these doughnuts.

When we started frying, everything went successfully, no accidents! After tasting some hot doughnuts, we decided they needed a glaze, and used the powdered sugar & cream glaze that was suggested with another recipe.

I enjoyed making the doughnuts, especially since it is a project I wouldn’t have done without the challenge. The doughnuts were of course best hot, and a couple hours after frying, the doughnuts had a distinct oily-fried flavor.

The ‘chocolate’ doughnuts did not taste chocolaty at all, which was disappointing but not surprising. I had added two tablespoons cocoa powder to the milk mixture, which did not give a significant flavor enhancement. All in all, great challenge!