An old fashioned doughnut is just IT, isn’t it?
I used to manage the marketing for a shopping centre when I was in my early twenties (seems so long ago… God damn it…) and there was a doughnut vendor on-site who would always charm me.
If the gaudy colourful van wasn’t enough to Pied Piper my childish self in, the hallucinating scent of hot batter and sugar was. Cakey to the bite but with a gentle sugary crunch to them, the doughnut truly is a gift.
Now the doughnut seldom sees my Kitchen. There’s too much deep oil involved. Those of you who read my blog often (first of all, thanks) but second of all may have heard me say before I have a fear of lots of hot oils. I live in a high rise apartment and live in a constant state of fear I’ve left the oven on, let alone messing around with oils and stuff.
That’s why this particular doughnut recipe appeals to me more than anything. The batter cooks in a scant 2/3cm of hot oil and the batter comes together while you wait for it to heat up. Nothing complicated, nothing scary. What the batter produces are a small handful of puffy, springy doughnuts that are deceptively dense.
And despite the fact I’ve sung the praise of the old fashioned doughnut, I must admit that I couldn’t help myself by putting a spin on the batter. The sour cream packs a lot of moisture into the doughnut so that you’re not just eating a puff of air and the apple cider keeps everything frothy and somehow assist the rising agents in the batter to boost up the puff.
Cider boosts the puff.
Maybe my mum drank cider when she was pregnant with me…
Pour about 3cm of vegetable oil into a frying pan and turn the heat up high.
While the oil heats up, drop 120g of sour cream into a bowl with one egg. Pour in a teaspoon of vanilla extract and fork all three together.
Empty in 50g of plain flour, a heaped teaspoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt, a pinch of cinnamon and 2 teaspoons of sugar. Mix everything together.
Now empty in 2 shotglasses of fizzy apple cider. Don’t get too hung up on the quality of cider because the cider tang vanishes into the batter, it’s the slight sourness and fizz you want.
Mix everything together.
Check your oil is hot enough by tossing in a tiny fingernail size piece of bread and if it starts to sizzle and go brown, the oil is hot enough.
Carefully spoon in dollops of the batter. When the batter hits the oil it’ll seize a little into small balls but don’t panic if they start to grow little dinosaur looking tails. That just means more doughnut for you.
I fit roughly 6/7 small doughnuts into my pan at one time, yours may vary depending on the size of your pan.
Keep them bobbing in the oil for roughly 3 minutes and carefully turn them over and allow to cook for about 2-3 minutes on the other side. Carefully remove from the oil to an awaiting plate to cool.
Wait for the oil to heat back up a little (the oil temperate would’ve dropped because of the batter) and when it’s hot again, continue adding spoonfuls of batter and keeping going until you’ve ran out of batter.
Serve them warm, but with a light dusting of icing sugar.
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 