Charlie's Glazed Ring Doughnuts

Charlie's glazed ring doughnuts

Ingredients:

2 (7g) sachets dried active baking yeast

60ml warm water

355ml lukewarm milk

100g caster sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

75g butter

625g plain flour

1 litre vegetable oil for frying

For the glazing:

75g butter

200g icing sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

60ml hot water

Method:

So....my brave attempt at doughnuts (one of my most favourite things in the world) started with sprinkling the yeast over the warm water and (supposedly) letting it stand for 5 minutes, or until foamy. I just couldn't leave well alone and gave it a stir, this then panicked me as I worried that I had 'killed' the yeast....I may be a tad over dramatic!

In a large bowl I mixed the yeasty water with the milk, sugar, salt, eggs, butter and half the flour. At this point I started to panic more as it looked like a gloopy mess! I added more flour gradually, beating very patiently to get the dough to come away from the bowl. This took a while and I confess I completely deviated from the recipe and must have added about double the amount of flour required!!! It worked though! 

When the dough finally decided to stop sticking to the bowl I kneaded it and then put it in a greased bowl, covered with cling film and left it in my airing cupboard for about half an hour. The recipe said the dough was done when a finger mark left an indentation and it had doubled in size. 

I then turned the dough out onto a (very) floured surface and rolled until it was about 1cm thick. I made two different sizes so used a large cutter, and then made the hole with a smaller cutter (obviously!!). With the middle bits I then made a hole in those and they became my mini doughnuts. 

I covered these with a clean tea towel and left them to rise until they had doubled in size. 

While the oil was heating up, I made the glazing. I melted the butter and added the icing sugar and vanilla extract. When this was smooth I removed the saucepan from the heat and gradually added the hot water until it was thin but not watery. 

Getting the oil to the right temperature proved to be the most complicated part of the method (I don't have a thermometer which would have helped!) and I definitely needed small bits of dough to check whether it was ready. 

Quite a few of the little doughnuts got eaten by my 'helper' to test whether they were cooked through! 

Using a wide spatula I added the doughnuts to the oil and turned them over as they rose to the surface. I was very picky with the cooking and turned them constantly to make sure they weren't burning! 

When they were golden in colour my faithful assistant (when not eating the glazing!) covered the doughnuts in the glazing (don't worry folks he had a spoon in the pan and was licking that!!). 

They were left to cool on a wire rack. 

This recipe was relatively easy...after I had decided to go my own way with the amount of the flour and tentatively fry them!