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Photo: hayley.daen / Flickr

There’s nothing like the smell of fresh, warm doughnuts and they’re not at all difficult to make. This recipe will give you 12 cinnamon sugar doughnuts which shouldn’t take much longer than half an hour to prepare and 10 minutes to cook. Ingredients include butter, plain cake flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, grated nutmeg, buttermilk and eggs. Cinnamon and sugar are required for dusting. You’ll need groundnut oil or vegetable oil for the frying and a deep fryer or cast-iron pan.

Ingredients

You will need the following ingredients to make 12 doughnuts: 50 grams of melted butter (at room temperature), 500 grams of plain cake flour, 200 grams of sugar, 2 level teaspoons of fresh baking powder, 1 level teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 2 level teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of grated nutmeg (preferably fresh), 175 ml of buttermilk, 2 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk.

Mix 160 grams of sugar and ¾ teaspoon of ground cinnamon for the sugar and cinnamon dusting.

You will also need a rolling pin, a 9cm round dough cutter and a 3 cm round dough cutter. The dough cutters will be used to cut out the buttermilk doughnut rings. Allow for extra cake flour to liberally dust your work surface, cutting rings and rolling pin as the dough is rather sticky. Re-dust your cutting rings and rolling pin as you work to ensure that your doughnut rings are even.

Prepare the dough

Preheat the cooking oil in a deep fryer or cast iron pan to a temperature of 190 degrees Celsius. This can be done just before the batter is ready. Sift 150 grams of the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and nutmeg together in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar.

Whisk the eggs and egg yolk in a separate bowl, together with the buttermilk. Whisk in the melted butter and pour the batter over the dry ingredients. Incorporate the wet and dry ingredients by beating them together with a wooden spoon. Sift in the remaining flour and mix again.

Cut out the doughnuts

Dust your work surface with flour. Use a floured rolling pin to roll out the dough to a thickness of one centimetre. Use the large dough cutter to cut out doughnut rings and the smaller cutter to cut out the dough in the centre of the discs.

Work the trimmings into a ball, flatten and roll out more dough in order to cut out more doughnuts.

Fry

Lower the buttermilk doughnuts into the preheated oil very carefully (don’t allow any overlaps). The doughnuts will be ready for turning when they pop up. This should take two minutes by which time they should be golden brown in colour. Use a slotted spoon to turn them over and allow them to cook for another minute.

Once they are golden brown on the other side, remove them from the oil and drain them on kitchen paper. Toss them in the cinnamon sugar.

Tags: baking