Baked Doughnuts

Baked Doughnuts

With a lemon icing and topped with natural-coloured sprinkles

As I'm slowly replacing all my pantry Tupperware with lovely glass jars, I usually carefully check out the kitchen section of local Op Shops.  Lo and behold!  A 12-hole doughnut tray!  For three bucks?  Sure!  I'll take it!!   (And the glass jar beside it for $1.)

So, then the big question?  Do I reeeeaaally want to 'bake' doughnuts?  Really?  The fried ones are, obviously, da best!!  The best tasting I mean.  To me,  the only 'real' doughnuts are the fried ones.  In circles, coated in cinnamon sugar or in a ball,  with a shot of hot red jam in the middle.  Oh, so many memories... in the crowd of a Tuesday night football games at VFL Park... a red stain down the front of whatever top I had on...  hot, sticky jam that squirted out when I bit the wrong side...

Where was I?  Baked doughnuts.

I went to the Thermomix forum for this recipe.  I knew someone would have mastered it for me to just adjust to Failsafe-ese.  The original recipe had yogurt,  but I only had Ricotta cheese....  it worked really well!  The second time I made them, I doubled the recipe and it was still fine.  I now have some in the freezer for another day.  I'll let you know how I go with those ones when they get eaten.

Ingredients:

• 170g Plain Flour
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• 85g Sugar
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 2 tabs (40g) melted Butter
• 65g Milk
• 75g plain Ricotta cheese (careful it has no preservatives)
• 1 Egg

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180ºC
• Put sugar in TMX and pulverise at Speed 9 for about 5 seconds
• Set aside about 10g of the icing sugar for coating the doughnuts afterwards.
• Add Flour, Baking powder and Salt and mix together for approx. 25 seconds at Speed 6. 
• Add Butter and mix 20 seconds at Speed 5-6. 
• Put in butterfly whisk and add Milk, Ricotta and Egg.  
• Whisk for 20 seconds at Speed 3 (l scraped down the sides half way through).
• Use piping bag or spoon to put mixture into doughnut tray, until about 3/4 full.  
• Bake in oven until they're golden brown and spring back when touched (around 10 minutes).  
• Let cool slightly, remove from tray and cover with favourite glaze.

Verdict:  Lucky there are 6 of us or else I would have sat down to eat the whole lot!!  Oh my goodness!  So yummy!!!

Tweeks:  I had to brush these front and back with a little butter to get the Sugar Coating to stick.  The second lot I made, I iced with a caramel sauce I had in the fridge,  then sprinkled with some white  hundreds and thousands (nonpareils) from Hullabaloo Food.  Very professional looking, I thought.