Baking toys

I decided to try baking something new the other week. I was going to be attending an "Epic Potluck" so I needed to bring something people hadn't seen before. I had no ideas, so my friend suggested mini doughnuts! They sounded perfect; nice little balls of dough, covered in sprinkles or some other topping. The only problem was I don't like frying things, so I would need another way to get a doughnut.

I had seen doughnut pans and doughnut-shaped sandwich-type presses at kitchen stores before, but I just thought they were a novelty, a waste of money. Well, I am now the owner of one of those potential waste of money doughnut pans, and we'll see if I end up ever using it after this party!

The recipe is very straight forward (from the Allrecipes website), and going into this you need to know these are a cakey doughnut. They aren't those light and fluffy doughnuts from Timmy's or where ever else you get doughnuts; they are more like muffins (which isn't necessarily a bad thing!) Here's the recipe:

Baked Doughnuts

Adapted from the Allrecipes website

Makes about 20 doughnuts

 

1 cup white sugar

2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup milk with 1 tbsp white vinegar in it (let sit for 5 minutes)
3 eggs
1 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 cup butter, melted

Decorations: melted chocolate, icing sugar in a bag, cinnamon and sugar in a bag, icing sugar glaze and sprinkles.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly grease a baking sheet, or donut baking pan.
2. In a medium bowl, mix sugar, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and flour. Mix milk and vinegar with the eggs, maple syrup and butter in a separate medium bowl, and stir into the dry ingredients. Spoon the mixture onto a piping bag and pipe into the doughnut mould (Or pipe into O's on the baking sheet)
3. Bake 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown.
4. To decorate the doughnuts either: dip them in the melted chocolate; dip them in the glaze and them dip them in the sprinkles; or toss them (while warm) in a bag with either icing sugar, or cinnamon and sugar.

I had followed a substitution recommended by other reviewers, saying to use maple syrup instead of honey. And since I didn't have buttermilk I used the milk/vinegar substitution. The only difficulty with the recipe is getting the batter into the doughnut pan. The batter ends up very thick and is not easy to spoon into the tin. That's why I decided to use a disposable party bag to simply pipe the batter in - it worked out beautifully!

For decorations, I decided to make four different kinds, to make these doughnuts 'epic'. I decided to go with the traditional topping I remember from my childhood (even though I hardly ate doughnuts as a kid). But really, you could top them with whatever you want!

The doughnuts turned out delicious; nicely spiced and my favourite topping was probably the cinnamon and sugar by far. I don't know how often I'll be using my new doughnut pan, but I definitely think it was a worthwhile purchase. Who knows, maybe I can start baking some other things in doughnut shaped pans too - doughnut cookie anyone?