How to Make Old Fashioned Donuts _ Fast and Easy Cake Donuts!

Hey , I'm John Connell .

And today I'm preppy kitchen , we're making old fashioned doughnuts .

So let's get started .

First off , we're gonna be sifting three cups or 360 g of cake flour into a medium bowl .

And here's the deal .

These are cake doughnuts .

They're not 11 yeas donuts .

So the whole joy is having a delicious melt in your mouth .

Crumb on the inside with that crispy powder edge .

If you don't have cake flour , you can still make these doughnuts .

All purpose flour will work fine .

Just use three quarters of a cup of that and add in about two tablespoons of corn starch .

These doughnuts have to get nice and puffy .

So they have all those fried edges .

Two teaspoons of baking powder will do the trick .

Now we want one teaspoon of salt .

This gives our doughnuts a little bit of contrast and I'm using kosher salt .

If you use fine grain salt , you use a little bit less .

It's time to sift it out .

Cake flour can actually be a little bit lumpy sometimes .

So it's nice to give it a sift .

Now , in a large bowl , we're gonna combine our butter and sugar .

The doughnuts themselves only need four tables , spoons of butter .

It's like 57 g in you go , just make sure it's room temperature .

And by the way , you can see , I'm using a hand mixer for this .

If you use a stand mixer , it's gonna be a little bit difficult just because there's not that much butter for it to whip up two thirds of a cup .

It's 100 and 33 g .

These doughnuts , by the way , took a lot of recipe testing to get chest right because they're Brian's favorite doughnut .

I just could not put out anything less than perfection for this .

I'm gonna show you later on in the video some things that can go wrong and why that happens .

I want this to get nice and fluffy .

It's gonna be about a minute of mixing on high that looks light and fluffy .

I right now we're gonna add in three egg yolks .

The yolks are gonna give us a lot of richness and also help hold things together .

They're a bit of a binding agent .

One of the things I like about old fashioned doughnuts is because it's a cake based doughnut .

You can make the dough ahead of time and just leave it in the fridge .

There's no yeast to worry about here .

Set these aside .

You could use them to make some delicious meringue cookies .

Ah , these are one of my favorite treats .

Now , we're gonna mix this up And as you can see , the egg yolks are really gonna help the butter and sugar combine into a wonderful paste .

This is about two minutes of mixing and it's gonna be really wonderful and creamy .

When you're done .

That looks so nice .

Look at this color , ah , it's like the most wonderful pasta , lemon in the world .

I once had pants like this in high school with the same color .

And my mom said I was brave .

I'm scraping the bowl down right now and it's time for a magical ingredient you might not have seen on the channel in a minute .

Sour cream .

Oh my gosh .

One of my favorite things to use this like yogurt adds so much moisture into your dough .

But because it's thick , the batter is not gonna spread out , it'll hold its shape .

It also has a little bit of acid , which means that you're gonna get even more of a tender crumb and it'll be a little bit fluffier too if you can't get a hold of it .

Plain yogurt is a good substitute as well .

We're gonna mix this up now and today , by the way , we're making a plain old fashioned doughnut with a vanilla glaze .

A classic that Brian loves .

But so many variations you could add to lemon zest , orange zest , you could make them chocolate .

You can let me know in the comments what your favorite flavor is .

And if you'd like to see that video on the channel .

Now it's time to add our flour mixture into the wet .

And one thing I will tell you is this dough is so simple to make as you can see , however , the whole trick of these doughnuts comes in the shaping and the frying .

Keep an eagle eye out for that part of the video .

I'm mixing this on low lowest settings until it's almost combined just like that .

Now I'm gonna use my spatula and just fold it together .

You do not wanna overmix your batter for these doughnuts or any other baked good just until you see the flour disappear .

You know that when over mix the batter , you're activating the protein in the flour and you're just gonna get a little bit of a tougher less moist melt in your mouth .

Delicious treats .

I'm really just looking for that flour to not have any streaks and this dough is gonna get chilled .

So one nice thing is any moisture that's residual hanging out in places here or there will soak into little crumbs of flour and then it'll come together .

Now we're gonna scrape our bowl down one final time .

Get all of that dough off of your spatula .

We're gonna cover this up and refrigerate for at least an hour , but you can do this overnight for delicious morning doughnuts .

Towards the end of your chill time .

You're gonna grab a big heavy bottomed pot , two inches of oil right into our pot .

You also want a thermometer for this pot .

The oil temperature is really important to get the perfect old fashioned doughnut .

We're gonna place this over medium heat and while it heats up , we can roll our dough out , we're gonna be sprinkling some flour onto a surface , maybe a little bit liberal with and pop your dough right onto that .

This dough is wet and full of deliciousness .

So feel free to use a little bit more flour .

So things don't stick a little flour for the top two .

Grab a rolling pin with some more flour and we want to roll this out to be half an inch , too thick .

It's too thick , too thin and it'll dry out and they just won't puff up enough .

So you wanna be a little bit precise in this step .

Part of the joy of frying anything is that crisp crunchy exterior and the inside of anything fried is basically steamed .

It's steam heat from the inside that warms it up and cooks it .

So we wanna have like pillowy soft melt in your mouth , doughnuts .

And part of that is the thickness that we roll them out to .

I have no ability to measure things with my eyes .

So breaking out my circle cutters that is three inches and for the inside , I want one and a quarter inch .

This by the way is one of my favorite kitchen tools .

It's just a set of circle cutters that I use for everything from cookies to biscuits to doughnuts .

We're gonna fly our cutters just like you would for biscuits and then cut them out .

Don't forget to grab a baking sheet lined with partial paper .

All right .

One donut down if you're wondering what my favorite doughnut is , which is a totally valid question .

It's a cruller .

But , um , on the west coast we call them crueller .

Don't worry about the edges looking perfect because you actually want kind of like a gnarly finish to these old fashioned doughnuts .

The amazingness as Brian frequently tells me , comes from that mixture , the giant groove in the middle , those split edges .

And I do have a question for you which I want you to answer in the comments .

Brian tells me that on the West coast because this is his favorite doughnut that all the doughnuts have like little ridges .

You're gonna see what that looks like in a minute , but he doesn't see them as much here where we live .

So let me know if your doughnuts have ridges where you get them .

OK ?

We're almost through the set in between .

If they're sticking a lot , you can just run your finger along the edge of your cutter and ref flower it .

And you can see here , I ran out of big spaces so just reroll the dough .

It's no big deal .

If this was a glazed doughnut , I'd be kind of annoyed if there was like any kind of weird craggy surface .

But uh for old fashioned doughnuts , it's totally fine .

I used all my scraps , meaning there were no scraps .

So we're gonna use our one and a quarter inch cutter and just cut those centers out .

By this time , your oil should be just about ready .

So , keep an eye on it .

I was tripping .

It's a one inch center for the middle .

So cut those out .

These are your delicious old fashioned doughnut holes , which is my favorite part of the doughnut .

123456789 , 10 , 11 , 12 doughnuts with a lot of holes .

This is the optional step for Brian .

I'm gonna use a knife and cut most of them .

So you can see what happens and I'm not cutting , I'm gently scoring four times on the outside of the doughnut and that will just allow them to kind of puff up .

And segment .

Brian says that the most joyous part of eating these is breaking them into pieces by doing this .

You're giving more surface area for the crispy part and the glaze , I'll leave a couple unscored too .

So you can see the difference .

These are ready to go into the oil and while they fry , I wanna talk about the temperature and why that makes a big difference .

You can do this in batches of two or three if you want .

Definitely do a test batch of one doughnut just to see how it comes out .

I'm gonna place these in carefully with my hands , but I have a spider ready to drag him out and this is a must have tool for frying .

These guys are frying .

I'm gonna toss some of the doughnut holes in there as well and just keep an eye on the thermometer because as you add the doughnuts in , they're cold , it'll bring the temperature down .

So you're gonna play with the heat a little bit as you fry and turn the heat up , turn the heat down .

Just keep it in the range of 330 to 3 40 .

If you can , you're gonna watch these guys sink to the bottom , but then they will float back up and for the first side , they're gonna cook for about two minutes or fry for two minutes and then you're gonna flip them over and it's gonna be two minutes more .

You can fry them a little bit more to be perfectly golden if you want .

It's really up to you on how deeply golden you want your doughnuts to be ?

Oh OK .

Pop those out and we're gonna repeat this out for the rest of our doughnuts .

So you really have to be careful about the temperature .

It is so easy for the oil to get too hot or too cold .

Just keep an eye on it and like really prioritize the thermometer as much as you are prioritizing .

Watching those doughnuts for golden for the glaze .

We're adding 2.5 cups or 300 g of powdered sugar into a bowl .

You could be totally loosey goosey with the glaze recipe here , gonna add five tablespoons of water .

Here , I'm also adding half a teaspoon or so of vanilla and a little pinch of salt scales all done .

I'm gonna whisk this together and I wanna see a really thin glaze , not like a drizzling consistency that you would use on a bunt cake .

This is a coating glaze that will become almost invisible .

So there we can see really watery .

That's what I want it to look like .

Seeing all the doughnuts together .

You can totally tell the difference between oil that was perfectly in the range of 3 30 to 3 40 nice craggy surface cracked open on top and when the oil got a little bit hot , it's just sealed into place .

Not as much cracking , still delicious , but less of that signature old fashioned look .

So I actually just mixed in an extra tablespoon and a half of water .

Really eyeball it , it's up to you on what look you want the doughnuts to have , it's gonna be delicious either way , dip them in halfway through , you can shake off some of the excess and then just let them dry and become set .

If your doughnuts are really hot , the glaze will kind of melt over them .

These , I mean , they feel hot to me but they're on the warm side .

So you wanna have a thinner glaze that can just drizzle through and really highlight the shape of the doughnuts .

You don't want to cover that up golden crispy melt in your mouth .

Amazingness .

Mhm That is so delicious .

This really might be my new favorite doughnuts .

I hope you get a chance to make this recipe .

And if you like this video , check out my doughnut playlist .