Old-fashioned, Glazed Chocolate Donuts Made WITHOUT Yeast

Introduction Hey, it's Sam from Sugar Spun Run, and today we are making chocolate donuts. Today, we are making an old-fashioned style chocolate cake donut. These come together pretty easily. There's some chilling required, but we're not using yeast today. It makes a really nice chocolatey doughnut, and we'll be finishing them off with a shiny vanilla glaze. So let's get started by making that chocolate donut dough. Combine butter and sugars in a large mixing bowl and use an electric mixer to beat until creamy and well-combined. The first thing you need is just three tablespoons of softened unsalted butter. We'll add that to a large mixing bowl, along with one fourth cup or fifty grams each of firmly packed light brown sugar and granulated sugar. Next, you're going to want to use an electric mixer to cream these together until the ingredients are creamy and well combined. This should just take a minute. The softer your butter is the easier this is. Alright, so that butter is nicely distributed, creamed into the sugars, so next we're going to need two large eggs Add egg yolks and vanilla extract and beat well. —not this large. That's a very large egg, very long. And ideally these should be room temperature, and we are only going to be using the yolks from these eggs. So the whites, you can either save to use in something like meringues, or you can just discard them. Or if you have five million eggs like I do, you can give them to your dog, which is what I do. So there's one yolk. That is a fragile shell. Someone has not been eating their oyster shell. Things are getting a little messy. There we go. So while these are chocolate donuts, we are going to be enhancing the flavor by adding some vanilla extract. Vanilla and chocolate work well together. It doesn't make them vanilla donuts, so we're adding two teaspoons of vanilla extract. And we'll go ahead and stir everything together again using our mixer. Alright, and next we are going to need some sour cream. Add sour cream and stir again until batter is uniform. Be sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure all ingredients are well-combined. Sour cream is a classic ingredient used in old fashioned donuts. I use it in my sour cream donuts. It gives a really nice flavor and texture. You're going to need two thirds cups or one hundred and sixty grams, and I recommend a full-fat sour cream. I suspect that you could substitute a full-fat, plain Greek yogurt, but I haven't personally tried it. Let's go ahead and mix this in. Set that out of the way, for now. If I can get my cords to cooperate. And in a separate mixing bowl, In a separate, medium-sized mixing bowl whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt until well-combined. we're going to combine one and two thirds cups or two hundred and ten grams of all-purpose flour with a half cup or fifty grams of Dutch cocoa powder—Dutch process cocoa. I really like how that works in this recipe instead of using natural cocoa, which doesn't have as robust of a flavor. Next, we'll add two teaspoons of baking powder and just a half teaspoon of table salt. Alright, let's whisk our dry ingredients together to get everything nicely distributed, especially that baking powder. You don't want funky looking doughnuts. Bring back your wet ingredients. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet (I do this in three parts) and use a spatula to gently stir together until ingredients are completely combined (again, scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure everything is nicely incorporated). And we are going to gradually stir the dry ingredients into the wet. I usually do this in like three parts, and I don't use the mixer for this step. I just use a spatula. So it does take a little bit to incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. I really do recommend you doing this gradually in like three or four parts because if you try to add all of the dry ingredients at once. It is going to be very difficult to incorporate everything. It's harder for the wet ingredients to absorb the dry. And you could have a very dry, even crumbly dough that's difficult to work with. If that happens to you, keep mixing, it should all come together, but it is a lot more work that way. And if you absolutely have to, you can use your mixer again, just use it on low speed and try not to overdo it. Okay, so once we have a nice, thick, uniform dough, everything is well combined, make sure I get all of that dough in there, we are going to need to chill this dough. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour or up to 48 hours. We're going to cover it with plastic wrap to keep it from drying out. And it needs to chill for at least sixty minutes. However, one nice thing about this dough is it does well being made in advance. So if you want to make it, you know, make the dough today and cook the donuts tomorrow, that also works just fine. See you in sixty minutes. Once the dough has chilled, we can go ahead and roll this out and cut it into our donut shapes. Once dough has chilled, remove from the refrigerator and turn out onto a clean, lightly floured surface. Use a rolling pin to roll to about ½” (1.3cm) thickness and use a 3” (7.5cm) donut cutter to cut out donuts (and donut holes, we fry these separately as well). Gather any dough scraps and re-roll to get as many donuts as possible from the dough. So I'm going to lightly flour a clean surface. That’s a little more than light. I don't wanna use too much flour. Some people will roll out their donut dough or roll out their chocolate dough on cocoa powder instead of flour. Not my preference, but I imagine you could do that. I'm just going to work this into a nice, cohesive ball or disc. And I'm going to just dust my rolling pin, and we'll roll this out to be about a half inch thick. So I'm going to cut the donuts to be about three inches in diameter. I'll try to remember to link to this. And then I have my little donut hole cutter as well. This actually came with a doughnut cutter that makes donuts that are a little too small and thin for my liking, so I just used the little hole by itself. And you could regroup all of the little donut holes in— and scraps to make more full sized donuts, but I like having some donut holes as well as full sized donuts. Oh, and if you lightly flour your cookie cutter, it will make the doughnuts come out much easier. And I'm just transferring these to a parchment paper lined baking sheet. If you use a wax paper lined sheet instead, that's fine. We're not going to be actually baking them. Then of course we'll regroup our scraps and use this to roll out a few more donuts. And I'll just make donut holes out of the rest of them. Alright, we are just going to lightly cover this with plastic wrap. Place donuts on a parchment paper lined baking sheet, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and return to the refrigerator while you heat your oil. I don't want them to dry out. And we're going to put these in the fridge while we clean up our mess and start heating up our oil. So we want our doughnuts to stay nice and cold while we are heating up our oil. Fill a medium-sized saucepan about 2” (5cm) deep with cooking oil and fit a frying thermometer to the side (make sure it is suspended midway through the oil and not touching the bottom). Heat the oil over medium heat until it reaches 350-360F (175-185C) (this should take around 15 minutes or so, don’t heat the oil too rapidly or the donuts may not cook properly). I am going to be frying these donuts in avocado oil. And this stuff is pretty expensive, so I like to use a medium-sized saucepan, not something big like a Dutch oven because we needed to fill it with about two inches of oil. And so I don't like to use a lot of it if I don't have to. I've also fitted this pot with a frying thermometer, which you definitely want to use because we need to heat the oil to be between three hundred and fifty and three hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit. And that temperature is pretty critical. If it's too high, your donuts are going to burn on the outside. If it's too low, your donuts are going to be soggy, they could even fall apart, so you want to make sure you dial in that temperature. Make sure your thermometer is inserted so that the tip of it is in the center of the oil. If you don't want to use avocado oil, canola oil or vegetable oil will work just fine here —and they're much cheaper. So I'm going to set my heat to just a notch below medium, and we're going to let this warm up. Once it's warm, we'll grab our donuts. Alright, once our oil is to temperature, When oil has reached temperature, remove donuts from the refrigerator. Working with just one or two donuts at a time, carefully lower into oil (I use a frying spider) and cook for about 60-90 seconds per side. Use tongs or a frying spider to carefully remove from the oil to a paper towel lined wire rack. I recommend letting the first donut cool for several minutes and then checking the interior to make sure it is cooked properly through (should not be gooey inside nor should it be crumbly, adjust your frying time if needed). You may also use an instant read thermometer and look for an internal temperature of 185F (85C) to know the donuts are done. we'll take out our donuts. And I only like to fry them like one at a time because we're using a small pot and this is going to bring down the temperature of the oil. The easiest way to safely fry them is to put them in a frying spider, carefully lower it into the oil, and we're going to let this cook or fry for about sixty to ninety seconds. And that's per side because this is going to float and we'll flip it over. Now to tell your doughnut is done, you can consider the first one your test, let it cool a bit, you know, until you're not going to burn yourself on it, and then you can break it open and make sure it's not crumbly, which would mean it was cooked too long, and make sure it's not gooey inside, which would obviously mean it wasn't cooked long enough. You could also use a quick-read thermometer, like a meat thermometer, and check for the internal temperature to be a hundred and eighty five degrees, that's what I do. There we go, that flipped much better. Repeat with remaining donuts, being sure to allow the oil to return to the proper temperature for baking. Note that donut holes will cook much faster than whole donuts. Allow donuts to cool slightly while you prepare the glaze. Now make sure that you are mindful of your oil temperature this whole time because depending on how your stovetop heats, the temperature could end up shooting up. If it does that, you wanna make sure you're bringing it back down. And in between batches, the temperature is probably going to drop, so make sure it comes back up to that three fifty to three hundred and sixty degree Fahrenheit range before adding more donuts. I’m sure I'm gonna get the question of whether or not we can bake these donuts instead of frying them. Haven't actually tried it but I will save a few of these and I'll try baking them. That way I can let you know if that's doable or not —check the description or the blog or just ask me in a comment. Okay, once we have fried all of our doughnuts, Combine powdered sugar, melted butter, 2 Tablespoons (30ml) hot water and vanilla extract in a small bowl and whisk until smooth. Check consistency, it should be thin and drizzle easily off the spoon. If it’s too thin, add more powdered sugar, if too thick add a bit more water. we are going to go ahead and make our glaze and dip the doughnuts in that. We start with one and a half cups of powdered sugar, and we're going to add one fourth cup of melted salted butter. Now if you only have unsalted butter, just add a pinch of salt to that, just to give it a nice depth of flavor. Of course, we wanna use all that butter, and it's totally fine if your butter is still pretty warm. In fact, that's ideal. A lot of times I'll tell you, “Make sure you let your butter cool.” Nope, it can be hot. We're also going to be adding two tablespoons of hot water. I have three tablespoons measured out here, but I'm only going to add two for now and a half teaspoon of vanilla extract. And let's go ahead and whisk everything together. What we want is a nice, thin glaze. I have a little extra water in case it's not thin enough. I want it to ribbon smoothly and fluidly off my whisk. I don't want it to be too thin or it'll be wet, and then it could make my donuts kind of wet, which we don't want. So this is not quite where I want it. Add a little bit more water. There we go. Pretty happy with that. Let's do a test donut and we can always add a little bit more water if we need to. So, we're gonna take our donuts. These are still pretty hot, that's fine—that's actually great. We'll dip them. You can dip them on both sides if you want or you can just dip one. And you see how opaque that is? I actually would like my glaze to be a little thinner, so I'm going to add a little more water, that's way too white. Another test donut. It would probably be wiser to test on a donut hole. Let's take a look at this one. There we go. That's much better. It's still pretty white, but it's going to kind of settle on that. See? Much better. Alright, let's do the rest. Mmm, these look much better than the first one. Dip each donut and donut hole in the glaze then place on a wire rack to allow the glaze to become firm before enjoying. And I love this glaze. I think it's the same glaze that I use on my homemade yeast donuts. At the same time that I perfected this recipe, I also did one for sourdough donuts. They're not chocolate, but they're sourdough donuts and they’re so good. I can't wait to share that one with you. Do you want to see a recipe for the sourdough donuts? Let me know because I know not everyone does sourdough. I'll share it on my blog no matter what, but not everything gets made into a video. Alright, now this glaze will set, if you have the patience to allow it to do so. Personally, I usually eat them while they're still warm. It's a little messier, but you do whatever works best for you. And that is how you make these incredible, old-fashioned chocolate donuts. When you try it, let me know what you think. I really do always love hearing from you. You're also going to want to check out my sour cream donuts and my homemade yeast donuts if you are a doughnut fan. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you next time. That's a good donut, mmm! Alright, once your oven— Let me do it again. Mmm! It's delicious though.