84. Things that taste like donuts...

...and some actual donuts..!

This episode and newsletter could’ve just as easily been called ‘a celebration of nutmeg.’ There’s so much freshly grated nutmeg, and my life was enhanced as a result. It’s just as well we don’t need much of it, as high quantities are toxic. Don’t eat the entire bundt cake to yourself in one sitting, and you should be fine. Let’s get into the bakes - from lowest maintenance to highest.

Giant Donut Bundt Cake

Perfection

I used Shauna Sever’s Donut Loaf as my starting point, opted not to roll and made a spiced sugar for the outside.

I find this is too big for my loaf tins so I thought I’d try my bundt tin and make it a giant donut. More sides to cover in sugar! My bundt tin is relatively small (they seem to make them bigger in the USA, like many things!) - its capacity is about 2 litres or 8.5 cups. If you have the wrong size bundt tin, you can go back to the Shauna’s original suggestion and use a large loaf tin. It will take longer to cook through to the middle, more like 55-65 minutes.

If you live in North America I’d recommend using a proportion of cake flour (maybe half) for a tender crumb, our flour is low-protein in the UK so it’s unnecessary.

The feedback I got from this one was as follows: It was good if you don’t have a very sweet tooth (it needs the generous icing sugar coating); It was simple but good; It was someone’s ‘other favourite’ (this person loves my brown sugar Victoria sponges); It does indeed taste like a donut!

The icing sugar kept the cake soft for a day or two despite the lower-than-usual quantity of sugar in the batter. Use a serrated knife, or at least a sawing motion and a sharp knife, for nice clean slices.

For the cake batter:
385g plain/ all purpose flour (use half cake flour in North America if you like)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda/ bicarb
1 tsp fine salt
2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice (optional)
180g sugar
225g butter, soft
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 US/Canada/Aus Large eggs or UK/EU medium
240g buttermilk

For the outside:
around 75g butter
around 100g icing sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 325F / 160C. Butter a bundt tin really well and tap in sugar to coat the inside of the pan.
Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla together until fluffy.
Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, allspice and nutmeg together.
Add the eggs gradually to the butter mixture, beating well between each addition.
Add half the flour mixture and combine.
Add half the buttermilk and combine.
Add the remaining flour and combine.
Add the remaining buttermilk and combine.
Bake for 45-55 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

Once the cake is cool enough to turn out, melt the butter and leave to cool slightly. Butter the cake with a pastry brush. Sift over a lot of icing sugar. Repeat the sifting. You want a really good layer so it doesn’t all sink in.

Apple Donut Bites with Apple Sugar

A delight to behold

For a long time I’ve been confused when American food sources talk about apple cider. We have cider here but ours is usually alcoholic. I drank a lot of it as a teenager (we have a very lax attitude to drinking in the UK and I was rebellious - sorry mum)… as a result I can’t stand it now. But I am now enlightened that it involves boiling down apples to make a juice, and you might throw some spices in too. It sounds delightful. I’ve still never had it!

Here I used reduced some apple juice instead, which was great - it had a more caramell-y flavour.

In my research, I found most of the recipes for apple cider donuts were baked. Delightfully easy. To maximise the amount of sugar on the outside, I decided to make a mini version, hence ‘bites.’

I was browsing the dried fruit section of my supermarket and came across apple crisps, which are just air dried apples, usually given to kids as a sort of posh, healthier snack. They are expensive but delicious! So I used them to make an apple sugar. Freeze dried apples would also work. Such a good apple flavour! I could tell I was having a bad week as I nearly cried at the story of the character on the back of the apple crisp packet. He was called ‘Bumps’ and had been rescued from the supermarket rejection pile to make apple crisps. In my defence, he had a very sweet looking face, and I’d been off one of my meds for a few days as I’d run out. (Not much fun. Don’t recommend.)

These were really good, but if I were going to critique them they could’ve been a bit fluffier. I wondered about all that liquid with that little egg to help them lift and set. I may be being overly critical - my partner’s boss sent her an email with the subject ‘Donut things’ and the message ‘are good.’

Makes 24 small cupcake-sized bites. Best eaten fresh.

For the batter:
250g plain/ all purpose flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
150g light brown sugar
150g Greek or natural yogurt
100ml reduced apple juice (I reduced apple juice by about half)
90g neutral oil, such as canola, (g)rapeseed, vegetable, sunflower
1 egg (UK/EU medium, US/Canada/Aus large)
115g grated apple, squeezed of excess juice well using a sieve and spoon or tea towel
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice (optional)

For the apple sugar:
24g air dried apple crisps (or you could try freeze dried) - important that it’s a single ingredient product, ie. just apple
50g granulated or caster sugar

Method:
Grease 2 12-hole muffin tins (or just one and make bigger bites, or batch-bake). Preheat the oven to 190C/ 375F.

Mix the oil, sugar, yogurt, apple juice, egg. Add the grated apple and stir in.
Add the remaining ingredients and stir in.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until they spring back to the touch.

Meanwhile, make the apple sugar. Blitz the ingredients in a blender or small food processor bowl, using the blade attachment.

Once they are baked, leave to cool for 5 minutes then turn out of the tins, being careful not to burn yourself! Roll them in the sugar mixture while they are still warm. Feel free to dust more apple sugar over before serving.

Puff Puff with Spiced Sugar

They puffed!

These are West African donuts, called puff puff in Nigeria and Cameroon or bofrot in Ghana. They are simple, single-proved delicious nutmeg spiced fried donuts eaten at celebrations or as a street food. If you make them less sweet they can be a savoury food accompaniment, too (they are often eaten alongside beans in Cameroon).

I used Yewande Komalfe’s recipe as my starting point.

This is my second attempt at making them. As always with me, it’s been an emotional rollercoaster. The first time I tried to flavour them with hibiscus but it didn’t come through in flavour at all. I didn’t use a thermometer and they turned out pretty much raw in the middle. I was also using an unfamiliar hob, which didn’t help.

This time, I think I slightly overproved them - be mindful of when you want to fry as they prove quite quickly. I also struggled to keep the temperature steady - I was using a candy thermometer clipped to the side of the pan, so I could tell! This is despite using a cast iron pan. It’s hard to overestimate how much the temperature drops once you drop some in the oil, but then I was turning the flame up and it was getting too hot! I think next time I might go lower with the temperature, yes it could make them fattier but it’s not an uncommon technique in samosa making, and it makes things crispy and (crucially!) cooked through. OR I might just leave the flame alone! And I will use a wider pan. Thankfully, I made the puff puff quite small, which helped stop them being raw in the middle, but they were a little darker on the outside than I’d like. It was fun to go outside my comfort zone and challenge myself. I need a bit more practice!

For the batter:
400ml milk
2 tsp instant/ fast-action yeast
130g sugar
400g flour, half all-purpose and half bread, if you can
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
Neutral oil for frying about 3-4 cups or 700ml-1 litre

Spiced sugar:
100g sugar
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice (optional)
Pinch cloves (optional)

Warm the milk gently, or if you want to do a slower prove (e.g. overnight) you can keep it cold. Mix the rest of the ingredients together, starting with the salt and yeast opposite each other in the bowl (the salt inhibits the yeast so you don’t want them to interact too much). Add the milk. Cover and leave to prove until doubled in size, about 40 minutes to 1 hour depending on how warm your kitchen is and how warm the milk was. It will be a loose batter, not a bread dough.

Prepare the spiced sugar by mixing the ingredients together in a bowl.

When your batter has doubled in size, set a cooling rack over a baking tray to put the fried puff puff on. Heat the oil to 350F/180C. Spoon in the batter in tablespoon amounts. Fry for about 5 minutes, flipping them over and keeping a good eye on them - they may not need that long.

Toss in spiced sugar when cool enough to handle but still warm!

Cool and serve as soon as possible. Remember, the best donuts are the freshest donuts.