Home-made Baked Donuts

I think if I could tell you my one biggest food weakness, it would be donuts. Especially from Krispy Kreme when they're warm and just melt in your mouth. Unfortunately, they're not light on my wallet or light on my waistline. Last night, when I told my husband that I really wanted some donuts, he suggested that we find a recipe online to make some for ourselves.

We knew that donuts are traditionally fried, but we only had Olive Oil (no Vegetable or Canola) and we didn't want to risk frying donuts in Olive Oil (gross!). So we searched for baked donut recipes and came up with this one. It's delicious! Now the donuts definitely taste best straight from the oven and the recipe makes 1.5-2 dozen, so you may want to consider halving the recipe unless you're taking them to a party or something (the picture below shows roughly 1/2 or 2/3 of the batch we prepared).

Baked donuts
1 1/3 c. warm milk, divided
1 packet dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
2 tbsp. butter
2/3 c. sugar
2 eggs
5 c. all-purpose flour (I may try bread flour next time to see how it compares)
pinch or two of nutmeg
1 tsp. fine grain sea salt

1/2 c. unsalted butter
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 tbsp. cinnamon

1)Place 1/3 c. of the warm milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir in the yeast and set aside for 5 minutes or so. Stir the butter and sugar into the remaining cup of warm milk and add it to the yeast mixture.
2) With a fork, stir in the eggs, flour, nutmeg and salt--just until the flour is incorporated. With the dough hook attachment of your mixer, beat the dough for a few minutes at medium speed. If the dough is too sticky, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. If it is too dry, add milk a little at a time. You want the dough to pull away from the sides of the bowl and become smooth.
3)Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead a few times (the dough should be barely sticky) and shape into a ball.
4) Transfer the dough to a buttered (or oiled) bowl, cover, put in a warm place and let rise until doubled in size, about an hour.
5) Punch down the dough and roll it out to 1/2-inch thick on your floured countertop. Cut the outer circle, transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet and stamp out the inner circles with a smaller cutter. Cover with a clean cloth and let rise 45 min.
6) Bake at 375F until bottoms are golden, 8-10 minutes (start checking them at 8 minutes).
7)While donuts cool 1-2 min, melt the 1/2 c. butter in a bowl. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a second bowl. Dip each donut in the melted butter then toss in the sugar bowl.


Note: If you'd like to prepare the dough the night before, follow directions until step 5. After preparing the donuts on the cookie sheet, cover and put in the refrigerator. In the morning, pull them out and let them rise in a warm place for an hour before cooking.