Apple Donuts at Edible Vancouver

Last week I threw out my back. I could barely walk, I couldn’t work, and mostly I just moped around, and the handsome man I live with was unbelievably nice to me. Made me dinner every night, helped me in and out of baths, brought me ice packs, and hot packs, and just generally got a lot of bonus boyfriend points. 

So I thought I should throw some love his way, and when I was feeling a bit better I woke him up with homemade apple donuts. 

To see the recipe, check out a (self proclaimed) charming story about my dad, and see some more pictures you can head over to Edible Vancouver. 

Lemon Glazed Baked Mini Donuts

One of the best parts about being a baker is that at Christmas time instead of getting socks, or bottles of wine that only last an evening, people buy you kitchen stuff. Stuff that most people would never use, and stuff that you might not be able to justify buying yourself. Things like vintage bundt pans and ice cream scoops, or teflon scoops that are only to be used for scooping out dry ingredients. And the pans. The one use kind of pans that are hard to spend money on because you know you’ll only use them a couple times a year. I have lots of those.

I have a mini baked donut pan that I got last year. I mean the name says it all doesn’t it? You can only make it if you want baked donuts and you want them mini. I don’t think I have that urge all that often, but yesterday morning I was very happy to have such a pan because it made these little numbers.

Here’s the thing about baked donuts. People always say at the top of recipes that it’s just like the fried ones and you can’t tell the difference. And I am going to tell you these are not just like the fried ones. The fried ones are yeasted and take ages and then you have to heat up a gallon of oil on your stove top. And you can produce incredible donuts like that, but you also have to be very aware and awake at a very early time if you want donuts on Saturday morning.

I do not like frying things on my stove top that early. I just don’t.

One of these days I will do this for you, but in the meantime you can have these. These aren’t crispy and light the way a fried donut is, because it’s not fried. But it is bright and citrus-y and the hint of cinnamon makes them taste a tiny bit like the cinnamon sugar donuts you get at a fair. They are not fried but that does not stop them being delicious. Which is why you’ll notice that because their so tiny you haven’t noticed how just how many you’ve shoved in your mouth!

Lemon Glazed Baked Mini Donuts

Donuts

1 cup AP Flour

1/2 cup Sugar

1 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Cinnamon

3 tbsp Yoghurt or Buttermilk

3 tbsp Melted Butter, plus more for pans

2 Eggs

Glaze

1 cup Icing sugar

1-2 tbsp Lemon Juice

Zest of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 400F

Grease pans very well- there isn’t much fat in this recipe and they will stick.  Even if it’s a non stick pan. 

Mix the wet ingredients in a bowl and whisk until they get a bit frothy and are pretty well emulsified. Mix the dry ingredients in a larger bowl.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until barely combined. 

Put the batter in a piping bag or a ziploc bag with the end cut off and pipe the batter about half way up the pans.

Bake for 7-10 minutes until the outsides are starting to get brown and when you push the top it springs right back at you.

Let them sit in the pan for another couple minutes before carefully easing them out of the pans. Hopefully you greased yours more than me, because mine took some serious work to get them out. 

Let them cool. 

Meanwhile make the glaze:

Mix all the ingredients together. Yup, that’s it.

Once the donuts are cooled drizzle the glaze on top and dig in!

  

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.