Heavenly Glazed Donuts

Donuts are the little fried dough balls that fell from heaven. Up until last night, it had never really occurred to me that these dreamy snacks could be made at home. However, as I was perusing the food corner of the web last night in search of inspiration, I came across this post {click here} from The Thirty Spot and decided to give it a whirl, adding in some of my own tips and tricks.

A couple observations before we start out...

Deep Fryer : Useful but not crucial to the process. I used a plain old pot half full of canola oil.

Candy thermometer : Again, useful but not necessary. Can be used to measure the temperature of your oil. I just watched the oil for when it started to look like it had what i call the "blown glass effect", when it starts to make shapes in the bottom of the pot, then i used a couple little pieces of dough that I had left as testers to make sure it was hot enough. If those are turning brown, you're golden.

Tools : DO NOT USE ANY PLASTIC SPATULAS, SLOTTED SPOONS OR OTHER INSTRUMENTS THAT WILL COME INTO CONTACT WITH THE OIL. Plastic melts, you have been warned. 

General tip : Donuts cook much faster than you'd imagine. There is no harm in continually flipping them in the oil to make sure they're not burning, it will give you a better sense of how much time they take.

When to eat :  Right away! The donuts do keep for a day or two, but because these are homemade and not stacked with preservatives, they do go stale quicker than you'd like, so don't make them too long in advance.

Heavenly Glazed Donuts (Makes approximately 24)

Ingredients:

Donuts:

- 2 packages of yeast (8g each)

- 1/4 cup of warm water

- 1 1/2 lukewarm milk (easiest way is to microwave it until it's hot then let it cool down)

- 1/2 cup of sugar

- 1 tsp salt

- 2 eggs

- 1/3 cup shortening or unsalted butter

- 5 cups all purpose flour

- canola oil (make sure you have enough, as you will be frying with it and it requires a fair amount of oil)

Glaze:

- 1/3 cup butter (softened)

- 2 cups icing sugar

- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

- 4-6 tbsp hot water

Directions:

- Dissolve yeast in warm water in a large bowl (feel free to mix it, mine didn't dissolve on it's own as fast as I wanted to and in this case, impatience didn't hurt my baking. So go ahead and beat it!)

- Add milk, sugar, salt, eggs, shortening and 2 cups of the flour.

- Beat until it's all well mixed in

- Add remaining flour and beat until smooth

- Cover and leave to rise for 50-60 minutes. The dough is ready when you can make an indentation and it stays.

- Roll out on a floured surface until dough is 1/2 an inch thick

- Cut the donuts using a large cup for the outer circle and a shot glass for the inner circle. Obviously, you may use a donut cutter if you own one, but i'm assuming most people do not.

- Cut as many as you can, then set aside your donuts, roll out remaining dough again and repeat until you've used as much as possible

- Cover donuts with a tea towel and let them rise again for 30-40 minutes

- While donuts are rising, begin the glaze by beat the icing sugar and butter together

-Beat in vanilla extract

- Add hot water (as hot as your tap goes will do just fine, no need to boil) 1 teaspoon at a time

- Set aside

- If you have a deep fryer, set it to 350 degrees F, if not, fill a pot or a wok styled pan with canola oil and put on high heat

- Once oil is heated (starts making cool patterns, and test dough turns brown, see tips above), place donuts in the oil to fry two at a time, flipping them once you see golden brown creeping up the side

- Flip back to check that both sides are golden, then remove from oil. Easy way is to just slide a butter knife through the middle.

- Set on rack to dry

- Once all donuts are fried, remove oil from heat immediately (or shut fryer off)

- Carefully dip donuts in glaze. The easiest way is to dip it in and twist it. If you prefer, you can also glaze them with a butter knife, but the look may be different.