Lavender Donuts Please!

I’ve been working part time for the last few months at a trendy sandwhich shop called Meat and Bread. It is full of beards, black tee shirts and burly men. I am the token girl.

When I first started there it was my only job and I was baking and blogging more often, and I brought them in a lot of treats. But then I got another job, started working 60 hours a week and I am a way less charming employee now. So last week when I got to sleep in and work only the one job (usually I’m up at 4:30am so if I work at 10am it is a great productive morning for me!) I thought I would be sweet and bring them some goodies.

These aren’t really donuts, they are for all technical purposes crullers. Crullers are donuts simple, friendly, and lovable cousin. They take minutes to put together, can be done by easily by anyone and are just as adaptable in what you put on them. This is the magic of choux paste. If you bake choux paste and put chocolate on top you have an eclair, if you bake it in little balls and put pastry cream in it you have a cream puff, if you add cheese to the batter and bake it you have gourgeres. Basically you want to know how to make choux paste. And then you’ll probably want to fry it and toss it in lavender sugar, and then you’ll deffinately want to eat too many. But you’ll be very happy, I promise.

Lavender Sugar

1 cup Sugar

1tbsp Dried Edible Lavender

Choux Paste

1 cup water
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

Mix the sugar and lavender in a food processor until the lavender is small and crushed up, or use a mortar and pestal to mash up the lavender and then add it to the sugar.

Combine the salt, water and butter in a saucepan and bring to a simmer.

Add in the flour in one go and mix vigourously still on the heat until it is smooth,

And then beat for another minute or two.

With a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment add the eggs in one at a time beating will between each addition, you could also do this by hand pretty easily.

Put the batter into a piping bag and pipe whatever shapes you want. I did the traditional donut shape. An easy trick: pipe them onto little squares of parchment paper. The paper will slide right off when you fry them. 

Meanwhile heat up the oil, on medium heat until it comes to 350F. If you don’t have  a thermometer you can test it by dropping in a drop of water. It will drop on the bottom for a second and then will bubble away quite quickly. Thats when you know your oil is ready.

So get a couple donuts in!

Within a couple seconds the parchment will slide off, and in a minute or two you should flip them with a slotted spoon or tongs.

When they’re nice and a deep golden brown toss them into your sugar and then eat them as quickly as you possibly can.