I have some pretty amazing friends (I have probably told you that before), and I am certain that is an understatement. The thing is, they are all easily bribed. Learning how to bribe fairly compensate show gratitude for your friends will get you far in life. Offering food in exchange for advice helped me land my current job.
After an exciting fall, I am going home.
You see, I currently (for the next 19 days) live in central Illinois but I am about to make a big change. Almost a year and a half after moving here to Champaign, I am moving back to Chicago. Read more
I am back with more doughnuts. And more pumpkin. Two things that I kind of love right now.
After a weekend filled with football in South Bend with Blondie’s family I declare that fall has actually begun. There was a crispness in the air before the tailgate that was decidedly fall. The Illini are ranked and Champaign is filled with a buzz about football that I haven’t seen before. It is time to over-indulge on football watching. Fall is decidedly here.
And since I had some leftover pumpkin, I decided that I could make some doughnuts. And make them taste like fall.
There might also be a video for this recipe. Maybe it will turn out. (Aren’t you glad that I am taking a video class and can make the food come alive on video now too?). And I will probably post it to share with you when it is finished, but I thought that it would be unfair to make you wait any extra time for this delicacy.
| Gluten Free Ginger Pumpkin Doughnuts |
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You really want to use good maple syrup (grade B has the most maple-y flavor).
If you are going to use pre-blended flour, please use a good one. I like Jules’ Nearly Normal Flour and Cup4Cup from Williams-Sonoma. Bean based flours will not do well here.
I might have a thing for doughnuts. I made 3 kinds of baked doughnuts earlier this summer with grown up flavors like honey lavender and ginger brown butter. (I might have also shown you that I have a ridiculous sweet tooth with those powdered sugar doughnuts).
When we were kids, doughnuts were a special tradition. On the morning of my first day of first grade, the ceiling collapsed in the kitchen. The fan was still spinning while it was sitting on the kitchen table. My dad, the breakfast superhero, couldn’t cook. So, he did what any dad would do. He went out to get doughnuts and started a tradition that lasted until I went away to college.
My favorites? Chocolate snowballs (powdered sugar-covered, chocolate whipped cream filled), Boston Creme and strawberry. Oh and pumpkin or apple spice doughnuts.
For this month’s Gluten Free Ratio Rally (in which we all create a recipe based on a ratio – you can learn more at Shauna’s introductory post), Meg thought we should all make doughnuts or fritters. The timing was perfect. School has just started; the air was cool this morning. And I had a whole bottle of canola oil.
My first two attempts at doughnuts were miserable failures. I tried one where you create a yeast sponge that you let sit overnight (hockey pucks) and another with the ratio that everyone else seemed to find workable (sand).
I sat down and did some math from recipes of chefs I admire (Jamie Oliver, Baked, Alton Brown, etc.). My ratio is radically different from the other ones that you will see. I used no eggs. I used a lower flour to liquid ratio. But I ended up with doughnuts that are like eating clouds. They were good plain (I had to taste to make sure), they were excellent with just the glaze (again, I had to taste them to verify) and they were pretty close to perfection once I filled them with cream and dipped them in the glaze again.
My ratio was 3:2:1:1. Flour:Liquid:Sugar:Fat. Pretty simple. You can scale this recipe down if it is just for 2 or scale it up to feed a small army.
If you are going to buy a flour blend, I made some of these with the Cup4Cup flour from Williams-Sonoma (that bag cost $20! You better believe I will be baking with it). You will have equally fantastic results with Jules’ Nearly Normal Flour. Want to blend your own? There is a break down in the recipe notes on how to do this.
Yeast doughnuts are not for the time-pressed, and I made these a little more complicated than just your basic doughnut. There is time involved (lots of waiting). You don’t have to fill yours, or cook raspberries to make a juice. (I also used the pulp to flavor my yogurt and cooked the leftover juice into a syrup for adding to bubbly water).
Think of the doughnut as a blank canvas with infinite possibilities. And then think of just how worth it a warm straight-from-the-fryer doughnut is. (KrispyKreme did not end up all over the country for nothing! Warm doughnuts are a superb treat).
Before the recipe magic, here are links to all the other participants in this month’s event, hosted by Meg at Gluten-Free Boulangerie
Charissa from Zest Bakery made Picarones (Sweet potato/pumpkin fritters)
Jenn from Jenn Cuisine made Mini raspberry doughnut cakes
Lisa from Gluten Free Canteen made Apple Butter Maple Syrup Donuts, GF
gretchen from kumquat made peach cider doughnuts
Brooke from B & the boy! made Apricot Fritters
Meg from Gluten-Free Boulangerie made Old-fashioned raised doughnuts & cake doughnuts
Rachel from The Crispy Cook made Chocolate Doughnuts with Chocolate Glaze
Caneel from Mama Me Gluten Free Thai Fried Bananas
Jean Layton made Cinnamon Apple FrittersOK
Silvana from Silvana’s Kitchen Vanilla-Glazed Chocolate Chip Doughnuts
Claire from Gluten Freedom made Chocolate Coconut or Cinnamon-Glazed Vanilla Cake Donuts
Jeanette from Jeanette’s Healthy Living made Pumpkin Spice Donuts
Shauna from Gluten-Free Girl & the Chef made Gluten-free yeast doughnuts
Caliegh from Gluten Free(k) made Beetroot Fritters
TR from Nobody Likes Crumbly Cookies made Sweet Pepper Fritters
Pete from No Gluten, No Problem made doughnut holes
Britt from GF in the City made fritters
Tara from A Baking Life made Gluten Free Brioche Doughnuts
Irvin from Eat the Love made Vanilla Doughnuts
| Gluten Free Raspberries & Cream doughnuts |
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*If you are not using a pre-blended flour, you can either use [url href=”http://glutenfreegirl.com/gluten-free-holiday-baking-2010/”]Shauna’s All-Purpose Blend[/url] and add 2 teaspoons xantham gum. Whisk well before using.
Or you can make your own with 90 grams (3/4 cup) tapioca starch, 100 grams (1/2 cup) sweet white rice flour, 60 grams (1/2 cup) sorghum flour. Add 2 teaspoons xantham gum and whisk together well to ensure that the gum is spread throughout the flour.
**I made mine by cooking a half pint of raspberries in 2 cups of water with a half cup of sugar for about 30 minutes – you can use store bought or just use milk and vanilla extract
This post is about doughnuts.Rich, chocolate doughnuts.
And maybe some bittersweet thoughts.
Nope, currently I don’t have any of those. Currently the only thoughts I am having are about how to keep the kitten from trying to sit on my chest while I sit and type this. And how to train him that feet are not toys. And that Cecilia is the boss.
Back to the doughnuts. These doughnuts might even make you feel sophisticated. Really, they just might. They are dairy & gluten free. And chocolate. Deliciously chocolate.
These are the last doughnuts that I am going to invent for a little while. Although, these have all been so delicious, I need an excuse to bake them all again. Quick, someone have a brunch party!
| Gluten Free Chocolate Doughnuts with bittersweet glaze |
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I might have made a third type of doughnuts. How could I not? The mini doughnut pan that I got for my birthday is just so adorable. Blondie picked it out hoping he was going to get some doughnuts…too bad these will probably all be gone by noon.
I am going to have the basic recipe memorized by the time I finish that Next Food Network Star application (shouldn’t be too hard to make it…these doughnuts could take on Bobby Flay in a throwdown any day.)
These are not as inventive as the honey lavender doughnuts or the ginger brown butter ones, but they are darn tasty. And they melt in your mouth. Just like a doughnut should.
You know those little doughnuts that come all stacked up in a plastic bag at a gas station? These are better than that. But just as addictive. And they are gluten and dairy free.
| Powdered Sugar Doughnuts |
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If you want to make these vegan, skip the egg and use a flax egg: 1 tablespoon ground flax and 3 tablespoons warm water stirred together until it is thick and gelatinous.
I used So Delicious Plain Yogurt, but you could use regular plain yogurt (not greek), if that is what you have.
You can swap the flours for 1 cup all puropse blend and 1/2 teaspoon xantham gum (or 1 cup Jules’ Nearly Normal Flour)
I want to live on doughnuts. I feel like they might be the secret key to getting through the next month.
When Blondie and I were blueberry picking, the farm had herbs that you could pick too, and we grabbed some lavender because that is not in my garden. I love the scent of lavender, but had never baked with it before these doughnuts. Eat the lavender! It doesn’t taste like soap smells (in case you were worried about that). It tastes spicy and peppery, a great pairing for the flavor of honey.
My boss’s boss told me today that these were amazing, and that I could make any doughnut’s I wanted as long as they were not mushroom flavored. Next time, it will be savory doughnuts…
Looking at these, I keep feeling like they are strawberry flavored – I just colored them so I could tell them from the ginger brown butter doughnuts I made earlier on Sunday.
| Honey lavender Doughnuts |
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For the glaze:
You can use dried lavender. Crush it first and only use 1 tablespoon.
No, this is not a macro shot of Cheerios. They are mini ginger brown butter doughnuts.
Things around here have been incredibly stressful. I keep telling people that I can feel the grey hairs coming in. And that I can see the wrinkles forming. The dentist kept thinking he was hurting me because my eyebrows are always pulled in tight. It actually is starting to feel unnatural to have a relaxed face.
Why? Because I am working on a couple of major secret projects at work. Ok, they are not so secret any more, but they are a little overwhelming at the moment. Blondie didn’t visit me this weekend, so I had plenty of time to do things like laundry and mopping (ick!). Well, when the washers in the building were in use nearly all day Saturday & Sunday, I had to do something. Since it was oppressively hot, I dared not go outside. And I couldn’t look at work or the vacuum for one more minute.
So, I made up a recipe for doughnuts. (Really! It is less stressful than my job some days!). The basic recipe is based on recipes for over 100 cake doughnuts and doughnut muffins.
I had fresh ginger for making some chai tea concentrate, and decided on a ginger doughnut. You won’t be disappointed by these!
| Gluten Free Ginger Brown Butter Doughnuts |
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To use an AP blend, use 100 grams (1 scant cup) of flour plus the flax, or 1 cup of a flour like Jules Nearly Normal and skip the flax.
If you don’t have a mini muffin pan, you can make donut holes in a mini muffin tin. If all you have is a regular muffin tin, you will have to increase the baking time and add an extra 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda.