Let’s talk about doughnuts. Do you love them or hate them? I (like most foods out there) love them! Certain foods in my life have memories associated with them. When I was little, I remember going to church and there would sometimes be doughnuts and juice in the church basement after the mass. This probably only happened a few times in reality, but I would always sit through the whole mass hoping they would have doughnuts at the end. On days I didn’t want to go to mass, I would try to use doughnuts as a plea bargain with my parents. “I’ll go, but can we go out for doughnuts after?” This is probably the reason why we started going to 4 PM mass so I would shut up about doughnuts. I can’t say that I have grown out of this now. I still correlate Sunday mornings to doughnuts every week. (However, I usually think about them in passing…I don’t actually have a doughnut every Sunday.)
For the majority of my life I thought the right way to spell doughnuts was “donuts” because of the beloved Dunkin’ Donuts. I love Dunkin’ Donuts, but the funny thing is that I rarely get donuts there. I do love their coffee and I also buy their coffee grounds to make coffee at home. There are no Dunkin Donuts where I live in California! I have to smuggle Dunkin’ Donut’s ground coffee in every time I travel someplace that has one. My friend from New York visited last week and asked me if there was anything I wanted her to bring. I was like “YES! Bring me Dunkin’ Donut’s Coffee!”
The problem with doughnuts is that they have an “unhealthy” connotation to them because they are fried and filled with sugar. Well, I have some good news on one of those problems‐ this recipe for doughnuts calls for them to be baked! This morning I had my homemade baked donuts with a big mug of DD coffee. Thanks B!
These doughnuts are from Ina Garten’s newest cookbook Barefoot Contessa Foolproof. My boyfriend and I have sort of been on a Ina kick lately. All the dinners and desserts and now breakfast we have made this weekend have been from Ina. I recently bought two more of her cookbooks at Costco and have been obsessively looking through them for what I will make next. I assure you that I will eventually be sharing with you what I have made.
I have made fried doughnuts at home before and they were really good. I do however try to avoid frying things at home for several reasons: it seems like a waste of oil to me, it creates a huge mess with splashed oil, and it makes my apartment stink like a fast food place for days. I am also an extremely clumsy person so being near splashing hot oil is just not a good idea for me. When I originally saw this recipe for baked doughnuts in Ina’s cookbook, I was so excited to try it. The only caveat was that I needed to buy a donut pan. I have this thing about buying pans that only serve one purpose. Anyone that lives in an apartment understands this because space is limited. I have the same conundrum with Madeleine pans too! I want to make them but I don’t want to own the pan. I finally saw a doughnut pan at Marshall’s the other week and it was priced pretty well so I decided to finally buy one. The cool thing about this pan is basically you can take any muffin recipe and make baked doughnuts with it. These doughnuts are easy to make and we even tried dipping half in cinnamon sugar and half in powdered sugar. I love that these are even better the next day after the butter soaks in and the toppings dry, making them the perfect make‐the‐night ahead breakfast.
- 2 cups AP flour
- 1½ cup sugar
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp. ground nutmeg
- ½ tsp. kosher salt
- 1 large egg
- 1¼ cup milk
- 2 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- ½ cup butter (1 stick), melted
- ½ cup granulated sugar mixed with ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
- OR
- 1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray doughnut pan with non-stick cooking spray (I only have one 6-doughnut pan so I just had to make the doughnuts in batches)
- In a large bowl whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Then in a small bowl whisk together the egg, milk, melted butter and vanilla extract. Take the wet ingredients and add them to the dry ingredient bowl. Mix together until just combined.
- Spoon the batter into prepared donut pans filling about ¾ths the way.
- Bake for 15-17 minutes until doughnuts spring back when poked.
- Let doughnuts cool for 5 minutes.
- Prepare the cinnamon and sugar mixture or the confectioners’ sugar for the topping in a medium sized bowl. If you want both cinnamon sugar and powdered doughnuts half the ingredients and put in two different bowls
- Dip both sides of doughnuts in melted butter and then sugar (either cinnamon sugar and confectioners.)
Source- Adapted from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Foolproof
