Nutella Filled Donuts

I’ll have to be honest - donuts are NOT the easiest recipe to crack! Its easy but its tricky, I had to kind of work through some failed attempts to achieve the perfect consistency. The actual recipe for any donut is neither complicated nor difficult, the key is to figure out the time it needs for the dough to rise. From my personal experience you should always go by time it takes for the dough to double in size and not the number of hours or minutes listed in a particular recipe. For most of the recipes where the dough needs to rise – it takes me double or sometimes triple the amount of time mentioned. I don’t know if it’s the climate, the humidity or the kind of flour available where I live.

For this particular recipe it took me a total of 7 hours of resting the dough and letting it rise to get the perfect donuts that would poof up upon frying. Another thing that you need to be careful about is when you fry the donuts, do it on a low heat or if you have a thermometer then fry them at 350F. This will ensure that the donuts are cooked completely from the inside out. Otherwise the donuts will brown up really fast and still stay dense and dough-y from the inside.

I know it all sounds complicated and that you need to be careful about too many things – but really its just two things. Letting the dough rise properly and frying the donuts on low heat. I really want that you don’t get discouraged by reading the tricks involved in this recipe, it is not difficult but needs patience. I have experimented and experienced failed attempts to make it so that you can benefit from it.

Try it on a weekend. Make it on a day that you are relatively free and are at home – once you make it, you will be very proud of yourself – just like I was.

You can fill the donuts with your own choice of jam/jellies/curds. It was Nutella in my case – because I just love that stuff!

Serving 10 donuts

Cooking time 30 minutes

Resting time for the dough 7 hours

Ingredients

2 ½ cups all purpose flour

2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp butter, melted

½ cup warm milk

1 large egg

2 ½ tsp dry active yeast dissolved in ¼ cup warm water

1 tsp vanilla extract

Nutella for filling

Vegetable or any other neutral oil for frying

1. Mix milk, sugar and butter together and keep aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl add half of the all purpose flour. Add dissolved yeast in it and mix well.
3. Add the rest of the flour and milk mixture and mix to combine well.
4. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix. The dough would be a bit sticky at this stage, but that is fine.
5. Flour a clean board generously and take the dough out. Knead the dough on the floured surface adding little flour on your hands for about 5 minutes. Try to only use as much flour needed to keep the dough from sticking to your hands and onto the surface. You don’t want the final dough to be very tight.
6. Transfer into a bowl and add a few drops of olive oil. Turn the dough around so that its coated with the oil evenly.
7. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and set in a warm spot till the dough doubles in size. Mine took close to 4 hours.
8. Pat down and allow to rise for the second time for about 2 hours.
9. Roll out to about ½ inch thick and using a biscuit cutter cut out rounds – you should get about 10 donuts.
10. Arrange them on a sheet and let them rise covered for another hour.
11. Deep fry on medium low for about 2 minutes on each side. Cool completely on a rack.
12. Fill up a piping bag that has a regular nozzle with nutella.
13. Insert the nozzle into the cooled doughnuts in the center of the circumference and fill it up with nutella. You can also poke a hole with a knife and add nutella with a spoon – whichever method works better for you.
14. Dust with powdered sugar and serve.