Filled doughnuts 101: nutella-raspberry and espresso-banana-caramel flavours, encased in homemade brioche doughnuts.  Jump to Recipe 

My family (and many others) think I must be crazy. To be honest, I’m half starting to believe it as well.

After multiple days like this and very little spare time, and even less to spend in the kitchen or on this tiny part of the internet, I spent the majority of my sole day off (preceded by 6 x 9-10 hour work days, and followed by another 6 x 9-10 hour work days..) making doughnuts. And then photographing, eating, and cleaning up after said doughnuts.

They were more satisfying than the doughnuts we construct at work, however. The pressure to get hundreds of the things filled in time for deliveries, the 430am starts, the way we are restricted (reasonably, but still..) to a couple of flavours, and the fact that there are HUNDREDS every morning does get in the way of some enjoyment. These ones, on the other hand, were made at slightly more at leisure, with only 15 produced and far greater license for creativity. Potentially even a little too much of the latter, because I couldn’t actually decide on one flavour…but that’s normal, right? My lack of decision making capacity when it comes to food is well known in our house.

The first was nutella-raspberry: nutella (or chocolate-hazelnut, to be precise), was swirled through the creme patissiere, followed by more whipped cream and juicy raspberries (frozen and thawed, but they did the trick), and topped with a silky, rich chocolate ganache glaze. That one was for my younger brothers – nutella fiends from way back, they go through a couple of big tubs of it a week, much to my Mum’s irritation and vague attempts at limiting it.

The other was more grown-up- based roughly on a banoffee pie, it was flavoured with a double shot of espresso and swirled through with mashed banana and salted caramel sauce, then topped with yet more caramel to finish.

When encased by fluffy, buttery brioche doughnut…they are truly decadent.

Please don’t let the whole doughnut making thing scare you off – deep frying really isn’t bad. A large pot will heat to the right temperature in 5 to 10 minutes, and all you need is a candy/sugar thermometer to check that it is roughly where you need it. As for the rest? Here are a few tips from my hours of doughnut making to help you along.

1. Try to avoid over or under proving the dough. I say try, as I still get this wrong! Err on the side of caution and cut the dough out a little earlier than you think, as it seems to be less forgiving to overproving than other breads. It can prove more once the dougnuuts themselves are cut out waiting to be fried. You want it at a stage that the rounds feel light and fluffy, and a finger imprint will slowly bounce back – if it stays indented, it is overproved. The sign of good proving is a ring of pale dough circumferentially around the doughnut on frying, like a little alien space ship. Only a few of mine achieved this as I managed to get so distracted by my nutella pastry cream that the dough was a little overdone…
2. Hollow out a cavity inside the doughnut with your finger before filling: avoiding cracks in the side of the doughnut – you want a solid hole to fill with pastry cream that won’t end up spurting cream everywhere! You don’t need to actually remove dough, you just press it against the inner walls of the doughnut.
3. Refrigerate the pastry cream for at least a couple of hours after making it (ideally overnight) before filling your doughnuts: I didn’t do this at home, though we normally do it at work, as it makes the cream firmer, easier to work with and less likely to make a mess (clearly, I didn’t learn!)
4. Have something to pretty up the outside of the doughnut: I never realised before this job how ugly doughnuts actually are – fried, sometimes cracked bits of dough that YES, taste amazing, but probably wouldn’t fly of the shelves as fast as they do if they weren’t added to! Here I used a chocolate glaze or salted caramel with hazelnuts and icing sugar, but other options are just tossing in icing sugar for a snowy finish, or tossing in a flavoured sugar (such as cinnamon sugar, or cocoa sugar, or vanilla sugar) and then garnishing with something relevant to the flavour.

Maybe cronut mastery will come next. Or cruffins. Thoughts?

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