Thursday, March 13, 2008

Vegan Whole Wheat Donut Recipe



First, take your favorite bread recipe and whip up a batch of dough. I like to use the recipe for Soft Sandwich Buns from The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook slightly modified to accommodate what's on hand:

1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup plus 1 tsp sorghum (or sugar)
2 Tbsp yeast
1/4 cup warm water
6 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt

Heat 2 cups of water and pour into a bowl containing the oil and 1/4 cup of sorghum. Let mixture cool. In a large bowl, place the yeast, 1 tsp of sorghum and the warm water. Let yeast mixture sit a few minutes, then add the cooled water. Whisk in 2 cups of flour and beat 100 times until smooth. Let sponge rest 10 minutes. Beat in 4 cups flour and the salt. Add enough flour so dough can be turned out to knead for 5 minutes.

Roll out until between 1/8th and 1/4 inch thick. Cut out into donut shapes of your choice. If you are going to fill them, you can cut them out using the drinking edge of a 3" diameter drinking glass. Place on an oiled or well-floured baking sheet. Cover with a towel and leave in a warm place to rise for 30 minutes.

Fill a soup pot with about 4 inches of good quality oil for frying. We used sunflower oil. Heat on high heat until around 390 degrees. Use a candy/frying thermometer to measure the temperature of the oil. Once it gets hot enough, turn the flame down to maintain the temperature.

Place the donuts into the oil. I only put in one or two at a time so that they are floating on the surface, but not touching each other. Turn over after 10 seconds and remove after another 10 seconds. They continue to brown after they are pulled out of the oil. Place the fried donuts on some newspaper or a rack so the excess oil can drip off.

At this point, your donuts are ready to eat. If you want to make them fancier, you can put them in a paper bag that has equal amounts of sugar and cinnamon and shake them until coated. Or, you can roll them in confectioner's sugar. Or you can make a simple glaze out of water, confectioner's sugar and a little vanilla. If you want chocolate glaze, add some cocoa to that mix.

Filling the donuts is easy, too! You can pipe in some cheap raspberry jelly or make some vegan buttercream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The donuts above feature the Vegan Vanilla Buttercream and chocolate glaze.

Enjoy!

5 comments:

Teresa said...

Hi. I'd like to try this recipe, but the water amount doesn't seem to be right. For 6 cups of flour, don't you need more than 1/4 cup of water? Thanks.

Amy Skyhouse said...

Thanks for your comment Teresa. The recipe does use more than 1/4 cup of water, but the book I copied it from didn't put it on the list of ingredients at the top.

If you follow the recipe from the beginning (starting with the recommended 2 cups and later adding 1/4 cup with the sorghum) then you should be okay.

Let me know if this doesn't work out for you and I'll see if there's something amiss. Enjoy!

Teresa said...

Oh, I see. I guess I read it too quickly to notice the two cups were part of the instructions. So sorry to bother you.

I'm hoping to try these soon if I could just get passed the fact that the deep frying part bothers me.

Could this type of dough be baked with a similar result?

Thanks so much for the quick reply.

Amy Skyhouse said...

The dough recipe can be used to make cinnamon buns, sandwich rolls or other kinds of soft bread, so you should be able to bake it. It would just be a different texture -- more bready I imagine.

Have fun!

Heather said...

I made these today for my food allergic kid. Thanks for posting it. I made a couple variations, but I think it tastes pretty good. I can't wait to feed my 2 year old his very first donut!