Chocolate Glaced Doughnuts

Someone at home has gone crazy on doughnuts, and it’s none other than my little picky eater! What surprises me is that he prefers the homemade ones and doesn’t like the shop bought ones. How much he trusts his mom, LOL. I have made doughnuts several times before, but I wasn’t really happy with the texture. Either it was chewy, or crispy and never do-nutty. Always had trouble getting it right and that’s when I thought, these are real tricky ones to get soft and right.

I have been trying few recipes one after the other and it was Ria’s recipe that was best of the lot. I followed the recipe to dot apart from using milk instead of water and the outcome was brilliant. I just had to leave my dough for few hours extra to rise. Inspite of  using new yeast, my yeast had trouble proofing. I also used a chocolate glace rather than a ganache. I am looking forward to make a baked version of doughnuts next time my son ‘demands’ me for some doughnuts. I am not sure how well the baked doughnuts are going to turn out, but it will be healthier than the fried ones for sure.

Chocolate Glazed Doughnuts
Recipes source: Institute Of Baking and Cake Art via Ria Mathew
Makes 10-12

Ingredients: 250 g plain flour +2-3 tablespoons of flour
1 1/2 tsp  yeast
100 ml warm milk
3/4 tsp salt
60 g granulated sugar
1 tsp milk powder
40 g chilled butter
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 large egg,beaten
Oil for deep frying

Preparation:

1.Mix yeast, warm milk and 1 tablespoon of sugar and leave aside for until it develops bubbly froth on top. Add in remaining sugar and stir till it dissolves. (It normally takes around 15-20 minutes for the yeast to proof anfd to get a frothy solution. But mine took around 40 minutes. If your yeast dint proof , don’t continue baking, discard the solution and proof again. You can read more on proofing here.

2. Sieve flour, salt, baking powder and milk powder together.

3. Cut and mix fat with flour. Mix well till fingertips till it resembles breadcrumbs. 

4. Make a well in the centre & add yeast mix and beaten egg. Mix till well incorporated and you get a soft dough that is not sticky. If you feel the dough is sticky at this point, just sprinkle more flour & mix till it is not sticky anymore and knead well. Let it rest for and hour or till doubled in size(in a warm place). Again mine took around 3 hours to rise!

5. Once it is doubled, punch down the dough with your knuckles. Roll out into 1/2 inch thick and cut out shapes using a doughnut cutter or using 2 cookie cutters/bottle caps. Let it rest for another 40minutes- and hour so that it rises again. This resting time is very important for yielding soft donuts. The resting time will let the dough rise creating bubbles inside which makes the doughnuts softer.

6. Add oil in a pan about oil around 3-4 inch high and place it on a low- medium heat. When the oil is hot enough, add doughnuts and fry on both sides until golden. Before frying, test the heat of oil by adding a small piece of dough in to the oil. If it rises immediately, the oil is too hot. The doughnut will get browned too quickly, without the centre being cooked.

7. Drain on kitchen towel and serve as is or with a chocolate coating or a simple glace.

For Chocolate Glaze:

½ cup powdered sugar (icing sugar)

1 ½ Tbsp Cocoa powder
2 tbsp Milk/Water

Few drops of Vanilla Essence

Preparation:
 1. Sift together the powdered sugar and cocoa powder to avoid any lumps.

 2. Add in the milk/water and vanilla extract and mix to form a glaze.

 3.This glaze will thicken quite soon. In that case, add in few drops of milk to loosen it.

 4. Place the glaze in a deep bowl and dip the doughnuts halfway through in the glaze and  allow it to set for 10 mins. Incase you don’t like chocolate frosting, you can just roll them in caster sugar or icing sugar or make a thin glaze with icing sugar and milk and dip the doughnuts in them. Th edounut tastes best on the day it is made, I warmed it up in microwave for few seconds when I had it the next day.

 Tip:

1. It is best to store yeast in the freezer for its best effectiveness. Do not use yeast that has past its expiry date. It might have dead and will not yield good result. Please check the expiry date before using it in the recipe.

Orangey Palmiers and a Note of Thanks!

Palmiers or elephant ears are crunchy and flaky French pastries. These are made of simple readymade puff pastry sheets, rolled and sprinkled with sugar and then baked after slicing them to required thickness of your choice.These are just a breeze to make and tastes simply yum. As you see, it requires just 2-3 ingredients and varies what you like to flavour it with, savoury or sweet. Recently these heart shaped cookies were cooking on few blogs when I kept an eye on it just because of its simplicity. I made an unusual twist by adding the orange rind which gave it a zesty boost. You may simply make the original version by omitting the zest and using just plain sugar. The savory ones would make a lovely appetiser for large parties since it is so easy to make and will taste good.

Other variation that you may try instead of orange zest and sugar (I haven’t tried yet though):

1. Substituting orange zest by equal amount of lemon zest.

2. Sprinkling a bit if cinnamon instead of orange zest to get a lovely cinnamon flavour

3. Sprinkling cocoa along with sugar.

4. Sprinkling 3- 4 tbsp of grated parmesan to make a savory version.

5. Sprinkling ground nuts of your choice and sugar - (This sounds quite yummy.)

6. Spreading a thin layer of nutella.

7. A light spread of pesto..etc..

I came across some of the above on many sites, so you may try your versions or leaving it simply plain, just by adding sugar alone.

Here, I have used unrolled puff pastry which you need to roll. You can use the ready rolled pastry which makes the job even more easier, i.e you don’t have to roll the pastry if you are using the ready rolled ones and you can follow the same method given here.

Ingredients:

1 block of unrolled puff pastry (375g); (I used Jus-rol Puff pastry)

4 Tbsp granulated sugar + 2 ½ Tbsp for coating

2 tbsp finely grates zest of orange (A large orange’s rind)

Preparation:

1. Thaw the puff pastry block as per the packet instruction. But make sure that the pastry is cold when you roll it; for the ease of rolling, without the pastry sticking to the rolling pin. (Mine was not really cold so i had a bit of trouble rolling the pastry.)

2. On a clean work top, sprinkle 2 tbsp of sugar. Place the block of puff pastry on the sugar. Start rolling the pastry until you get a large rectangle.

3. Sprinkle another 2 tbsp of sugar all over and rub with hand to uniformly distribute it. Sprinkle the orange rind all over.

4. Now, make a marker on the centre of the rolled pastry. A light depression with your finger or a knife will do. Start rolling the pastry from the longer side until it reaches the centre of the pastry, where you have marked it. Roll the other longer side in the same manner until it reaches the centre of the pastry where it meets the other rolled end. When both rolled ends are next to each other, bring the one rolled side over the other. (See the pictorial representation). Press gently to stick the rolls together.

5. Cut the pastry into ¾ inch pieces and chill if for ½ an hour in the refrigerator. You will get about 20 – 24 pieces. Dip each sliced pastry in sugar (It will need around 2 ½ Tbs of sugar for coating.) until it is completely coated in sugar and place the sugar coated pastry on a cookie sheet lined with grease-proof paper, cut side facing down.

6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Bake it in the centre of oven for about 15 minutes until the bottom part is golden brown. Flip all the palmiers with a spatula, bake for another 5-7 minutes until golden. serve with tea.

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The note of thanks that I mentioned in the title was thanking my dearest friend Shabna, lovingly known as Shabbu. She also hails from the malabar region and She is one of the gifted freinds that I received through blogging. Shabbu is my regular reader, one of my strong inspirations and a sisterly friend. Shabbu is a non-blogger but She regularly tries my recipes, gives me feedback and sends me the pictures after she makes them. I have to apologize, she had sent me these pictures very long back and its a shame that it took me so long to post it up here. There were times when I just thought of dropping blogging and it was shabbu who kept encouraging me to keep going. Thank you shabbu and Sorry it took me so long to post your pics. Here are few of the foods she prepared from my blog:

Aromatic Rice Pulao :

 Chemmeen Muringavaal Curry (King Prawns and Drumstick in thick coconut gravy)

Malabar Chemmeen Biriyani (Malabar Prawn Biriyani)

Malabar Fish Biriyani

Meen Pathiri

Kumbalanga Curry (Pumkin curry)

Malabar Chicken curry

Thanks for Stopping by.......

Kiddie Pizza

This is not the real pizza made with pizza dough and tomato sauce and then baking it. No. This is a simple and quick dish that I make for my little one for breakfast. It is hard to feed the fussy eating kids and can’t believe how fussy they can get at times. I can’t start my day properly if my toddler hasn’t had proper breakfast. Almost every time, I have to try many breakfasts before he eats something. Kiddie pizza is one of his favourites that he readily eats without any fuss. You can use different vegetables including courgettes or tomatoes. But i normally use carrots and Bell pepper and my kid is happy with that.

Ingredients:
4 tbs Carrot sliced very thinly and chopped fine. (or grated)
2½ tbs Onion sliced very thinly and chopped fine.
4 tbs Capsicum sliced very thinly and chopped fine.
5-7 tbsful Yoghurt
2 tbs grated cheddar cheese (optional)
A pinch of Salt
A pinch of Pepper powder
4 pieces white bread
A knob of butter

Preparation:
1. For making the topping, mix all the chopped vegetables with the yoghurt and cheese and add salt and pepper to season.

2. Toast the bread slightly just enough to make it crisp. Doesnt have to change colour. This way it makes this snack slightly crispy than soaky.
3. Heat a pan, add a knob of butter.
4. Spread the topping mixture thickly on one side of the bread and fry on both sides until golden.

5. Serve warm.