Chocolate Baked Donuts

These donuts are the best start to the week that I can think of. And of course, I like any excuse to use my donut pan. Of all the slightly frivolous items I have in my baking cupboards, this is one of my favourites. Its niche – I know. But I’m slowly realising that there are so many wonderful ways to bake ring-shaped delicious things.

All stacked and ready to be iced!

I decided to go completely decadent and make chocolate donuts with gorgeous glazes. The thing I adore about donuts is that you can dress them up so prettily and there are so many topping combinations! 

I went with AAAALL the sprinkles I had in my cupboard, but next time I am going to chop up some hazelnuts and throw them on the chcolate ones, and I'm definitely adding nutella to the icing recipe. And then the time after that I'm going to add so much coconut.

See, I'm getting huge amounts of use out of the two (TWO!) donuts pans I just had to own. A totally rational purchase! I highly recommend them.

Strawberry Cake Donuts

These donuts have fulfilled a lifelong goal of mine: to make a donut which looks exactly like one that Homer Simpson would eat. And I think I succeeded. Of course, I would have preferred the longer sprinkles for authenticity, but beggars can't be choosers (Sainsburys only had ONE type of sprinkles, the horror).

The difference between this and regular donuts is that there is no yeast, so no rising time. The leavening agents (bicarb of soda, baking powder) take care of the rising in the heat. What it basically means is that if you want donuts within 45 minutes you can have them. Which is VERY IMPORTANT information.

This wasn’t the easiest recipe to be honest, and a good few of my donuts got slightly charred on the bottom of the pan. But that was usually easily fixed, and icing sugar covers all sins.

The addition of cinnamon in the batter was a complete revelation. They aren’t the sweetest donuts without icing, but the cinnamon gives them a really delicious depth of flavour. And why would you eat an un-iced donut anyway? What are you, watching your figure?

Makes about 9 donuts and 12 middles

Loukoumades (Greek Donuts)

So, I'm taking you on a whirlwind tour around Europe this spring on the blog! I love to know how other countries handle their food/desserts. It is a big factor in my travelling decisions. I was extremely pleased to stumble upon these little tasty morsels when engaging upon my favourite activity (browsing for recipes). I don't normally cook with honey, and I love finding new ways to use little used ingredients.

They are small, light, sweet and zesty. I really liked the addition of the syrup which was incredibly simple to make and had a great pay-off in flavour. The only tricky issue is the dough, it needs to be formed into balls and it is really sticky. Working it with wet hands is the only way to easily form something resembling a dough ball. Mine are not exactly spherical, but they do the job!