These will require patience, persistence and your Mum’s kitchen mixer. So probably best to leave these until AFTER your exams (even though I am partial to procrastibaking). Plus, then you can raid Mum’s pantry for the extensive ingredient list! Make the components in this order: raspberries, custard, brioche. It took me about four doughnuts to get the temperature of the oil right. It should be 180 degrees, apparently, but I didn’t have a thermometer. I found a quarter turn of the dial worked a treat. If it is too hot the surface will burn before the inside has time to cook.
Ingredients
Makes 10 (plus four burnt attempts)Adapted from Treats from Little and Friday by Kim Evans
For the brioche dough:
- 275ml milk
- 2 teaspoons instant yeast
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1⁄4 cup sugar
- 2 small eggs
- 70g butter, softened slightly, chopped into cubes
- 1L canola oil for frying
For the custard:
- 500ml milk
- 1⁄2 cup sugar
- 3 egg yolks
- 1⁄3 cup plain flour
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or just plain old vanilla)
For the raspberry:
- 1 1⁄2 cups frozen raspberries
- 1⁄4 cup sugar
- Icing sugar for dusting
Method
- Heat the raspberries and sugar in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Stir until the fruit has defrosted, the sugar dissolved and a syrupy delight has formed (about five minutes). Remove from the heat and leave to cool. Then refrigerate until really cool.
- To make the custard, warm the milk and half the sugar over a medium heat in a large saucepan. Warm until hot to the finger but not boiling! Whisk together the rest of the sugar and egg yolks until pale (I use an electric beater or my stand mixer for this). Add in the flour and beat until smooth. While still beating, slowly pour in the milk. Once all the milk has been added and the egg mixture dispersed, return the custard back to the saucepan. Continuously stir the custard with a spatula over a lowish heat. Heat until the custard is nice and thick. Remove from the stove and refrigerate.
- To make the brioche, mix together the flour, yeast, sugar and salt. Whisk together the milk and eggs then slowly stir into the dry ingredients. You can do this by hand or with a mixer. Knead the dough for about ten minutes, until it is smooth. Then knead in small amounts of butter, a cube at a time until it has all been blended in. This will be tedious so I really recommend using a dough hook. Let the dough rise in a warm place until it has doubled in size.
- Pour the oil into a small saucepan until it is 5cm deep. Turn on the heat to a quarter of the maximum (around 180 degrees) and leave for ten minutes. Roll the dough out until it is about 1cm thick. Take a 10cm circular cookie cutter and cut out circles. Experiment with the first disc of dough. Place it in the oil and set the timer for two minutes. The dough should puff up and the side submerged in oil should be no darker than a golden brown. If it is really dark, turn down the temperature to low. Flip the doughnut and cook for a further two minutes on the other side. Once cooked, remove and leave to drain on a cooling rack. Repeat this process for the rest of your doughnuts.
- Once all your dough babies have been cooked and fully cooled, it is time to fill them! Stab one end with a knife and use the end of a spoon to wiggle out a cavity in each one. Fill a piping bag with a small nozzle with raspberry and pipe each doughnuts with about a tablespoon’s worth. With a large tipped clean piping bag, fill the doughnuts with a good squeeze of custard. Then liberally coat each doughnut in icing sugar.
- Enjoy and prepare to look like a cocaine fiend with each bite you take.