baked donuts.

I made donuts today.

Don't look at me like that, they're baked. 

And then doused in butter and cinnamon sugar or dunked in maple-coffee glaze. See? Moderation.

These donuts have been on my to-do list for a very long time and I'm glad to be finally able to cross them off. I didn't have any high expectations of them, which was a good thing or I'll be sorely let down. It's understandable though, that the taste of fried oily goodness is hard to replicate in an oven. Although, I loved making these! They were so fun to cut out into little rings. I quartered the recipe and got 4 medium-sized donuts with 17 donut holes (of which I ate 6 in addition to my regular-sized donut).

To have a resemblance of a true fried donut, nutmeg is the secret. Yes, the recipe called for some, but only a pinch. We definitely need more of it. The nutmeg was barely detectable after baking so the donuts were nothing special, they tasted like just normal lightly sweetened bread dough.

So, to make these a bit more special, I conjured up a maple-coffee glaze. Maple and coffee goes really well together! And this glaze is perfect on the donuts because the dough was hardly sweet. I sacrificed the consistency of the glaze to make it less sweet so you may have to use some dough to mop it up. Not a difficult task, I grant you.

And for the itty bitty donut holes, I dunked them in melted butter and tossed them in cinnamon-nutmeg sugar! The nutmeg really makes a difference, give it a go! The best part about these holes... they baked in 3 minutes. Yep, you heard me. 3 minutes.

Baked Donuts
adapted from 101cookbooks
makes 4 donuts and 17 donut holes

1/3 cup warm milk, 95 to 105 degrees (divided)
1/2 tsp yeast
1/2 tbsp butter, melted
2 tbsp + 2 tsp sugar
1/2 egg
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp fine grain sea salt

Cinnamon-nutmeg sugar coating:
3 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg

1 tbsp butter, melted

Maple-coffee glaze:
1/4 tsp coffee extract
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 1/2 tbsp icing sugar

Place the warm milk and yeast in the bowl of an electric mixer and set aside for 5 minutes or so. Add in the melted butter, sugar, eggs, salt, nutmeg and flour and stir until a rough dough has formed. With the dough hook attachment of your mixer, beat the dough for a few minutes at medium speed, adding flour or milk if need to achieve the right consistency. You want the dough to pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl and eventually become supple and smooth. Turn it out onto a floured counter-top, knead a few times (the dough should be barely sticky), and shape into a ball.

Transfer the dough to a buttered or oiled bowl, put in a warm place and let rise for an hour or until the dough has roughly doubled in sized.

Punch down the dough and roll it out 1/2 inch thick on your floured countertop. Cut out about 3 inch wide circles with a cookie cutter, transfer the circles to your baking sheet then cut out your donut holes with a 1 inch diameter cutter. If you cut the inner holes out any earlier, they become distorted when you attempt to move them. Alternatively, you can use a donut cutter if you have one. Cover with a clean cloth and let rise for another 45 minutes.

Bake in a 375 degree oven until the bottoms are just golden, about 8 minutes. For the donut holes, about 3 minutes. While the donuts are baking, prepare the cinnamon-nutmeg sugar coating by combining the ingredients together in a bowl. Set aside the melted butter in another bowl. For the glaze, just stir everything together, Easy peasy.

Remove donuts from the oven and let cool for just a minute or two. Dip the holes in melted butter and toss in the sugar coating. For the ring donuts, just drizzle the glaze over. Eat immediately! These donuts don't keep too well.

Linked to These Chicks Cooked, Sweet Treats Thursday, Full Plate Thursday, Sweet Tooth Friday, Fat Camp Friday, Sweets for a Saturday, Strut Your Stuff Saturday and Sweet Indulgences Sunday.