Mmmm… Sour Cream Cake Donuts

With our office work done for the day, (is it ever?) and rain blowing sideways, we decided to make some cake donuts. A while ago we tried the donuts baked in the oven, even bought the proper pan, but nothing replaces fried donuts. It’s not our first donut rodeo though, we’ve been making these at home for a few years now, and for about 20 years before that in a commercial fryer at our bakery.

Just like when we bought a meat slicer for cutting donair meat, we bought this fryer just for making donuts. We have never fried anything else in it, only donuts.

The first few times we made them we actually took the time to make them into rings, and while they looked awesome, it was time consuming. Now we just scoop the dough with a small ice cream scoop. Also we could only fry a couple of rings at a time, whereas we put 8 bits in at a time. The bits aren’t prone to breaking apart as much either.

While Jim makes the batter…

I whip up the glaze…

We have tried rolling them in sugar before. We find that when they go in a container, the next day the are wet. Who wants wet donuts. Not me! So we stuck with coating them in glaze.

With the batter and glaze ready, Jim starts scooping the batter onto a plate. Meanwhile the fryer is up to temperature and its time to get frying.

This recipe calls for them to fry for 2 minutes and 45 seconds. We submerge them and weigh them down with a homemade screen. Easier to get them to cook evenly.

When the timer goes off, Jim drains them for a bit and shakes them into the glaze.

I roll them around in the glaze and lift them out one at a time to a cooling rack.

We made a single batch which yielded about 30 donut bits. We only used half of the sour cream so before the week is out we will have to repeat the process. Not complaining.

Now if Jacob were still here he wouldn’t want to be left out of the fun.

I was looking through old pictures and came cross this old tin punch clock that we made many moons ago. Check out the wallpaper boarder. I think it was the 80’s.

They say April showers bring May flowers. If that is the case we should be over-run with flowers in about a months time.

Recipe for Sour Cream Glazed Cake Donuts

• 1 cup sugar
• 4 T butter or margarine (a 1/2 block (1/4 cup) of margarine is equivalent to 4 T)
• 4 egg yolks (medium to large eggs, or 5 small ones)
• 4-1/2 cups of cake/pastry flour (not all purpose/bread flour)
• 1 T baking powder
• 2 t salt
• 1/4 t nutmeg (or whatever your taste choices prefer)
• 1 cup sour cream (fat percentage does not matter)
• 1 cup milk (fat percentage does not matter, we use skim milk because that’s what we drink)
• Dusting flour

Instructions

1. Cream the sugar and butter (or margarine) together for a few minutes until well blended. We use a KitchenAid 5qt mixer, on speed 3-4. The newer models don’t have good clearance between the bowl and paddle so we recommend you stop and scrape every minute to get it blended well.
2. Add in one yolk at a time, scrape and blend, until all combined well. I blend it all together for about 2 minutes in a KitchenAid mixer on speed 3 or 4.
3. Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl and blend well.
4. Combine the other wet ingredients (sour cream and milk) into another bowl and blend together. The combination of sour cream and milk we use is 50/50 to eventually produce a batter that is quite soft, but just manageable to handle on a table surface with some additional flour dusted on during the process for handling. You could change the ration to anything else where the sour cream is more than the milk, right up to using just sour cream. The sour cream provides a higher fat content dairy product. The more sour cream you use, the slightly more stiff the dough will be. Which will make it easier to handle while cutting into shapes. The extra sour cream will boost the flavour too, a little bit.
5. Now you are going to combine everything together.
   • Add one third of the dry ingredients into the bowl that has the sugar/butter/egg yolks. Stir around to combine a little bit enough to pick up most of the flour.
   • Next add half of the wet ingredients. Stir together to blend together. It doesn’t need to be a smooth batter, more along the looks of wet oatmeal.
   • Next, add the second one third portion of the dry ingredients. Stir together as you did previously.
   • Next, add the last half of the wet ingredients and stir like you did before, just enough to bring everything together.
   • Finally, add in the last one third amount of dry ingredients. Stir to combine. At this point any remaining dry ingredients should be blended in and you should be looking at a soft ball of dough in your mixing bowl.
6. Dust your hands with flour. This can be all purpose flour or you can use pastry flour. Also dust the table top with flour. Place about 1/4 to 1/3 of the dough onto the dusted surface and roll the dough around to have it covered in dusting flour. Sprinkle some more on as needed. work the dough with your hands to flatten it to about 1/2 inch thick.
7. Cut the dough using a cookie cutter, or a donut cutter in you have one. We use a tin can that is a about 3 inches diameter. Then use a small cutter to cut the hole out. You don’t have to make donut shaped pieces. You could cut them into square shapes about 2×2 inches in size.
8. Place the cut shapes onto another part of your counter that’s been lightly dusted with flour.
9. Take your scrapes of dough and combine them with the next 1/3 of the dough.
10. Perform the same tasks to make your donut shapes. Then repeat the steps again to combine the scrapes with the final 1/3 portion of the dough. Once you are left with scrapes, simply combine together and cut into shapes to use up the final bit to make pieces.
11. While the pieces are resting, turn on your fryer and get the oil temperature up to 350-375ºF. While the fryer is heating up, the baking powder is starting to work in the batter.
12. The fryer we have is large enough to fry two donuts at a time. Place the pieces in the fryer and start the clock for 1 min 30 seconds. We use two forks to flip them over.
13. Continue frying for another 1 min 30 seconds.
14. Remove from the frying oil and place on a paper lined surface (or clean cardboard), to allow them to cool about 15 to 30 seconds before handling.
15. Leave them as is, plain. Or dip them in sugar. Or glaze them (the best!). Place one in a bowl of glaze, flip it over, then hold it up out of the glaze until some of the glaze drips off. Gauge the time based on your preference. Place on a cooling rack to allow glaze to drip off and cool down. Move to another rack to finish cooling if you prefer.
16. This recipe makes about eighteen 3 inch diameter cake donuts, or about 48 donut bits.

That’s it! Enjoy! We store them in air tight containers, like re-useable ice cream plastic containers. The donuts will last for a couple weeks in the cupboard in containers but honestly, who are we kidding, the donuts only last a couple days if that, before they are all eaten. 🙂

The donuts freeze very well too. Take them out of the freezer and you can eat them straight away with a hot cup of coffee or tea. Or let them thaw to room temperature. Or pop them in the microwave for 12-15 seconds to revitalize the oil, it improves the flavour and mouth feel some.

Glaze Recipe

• 3-1/2 cups of icing sugar
• 2 t corn syrup
• 1/2 t vanilla artificial flavouring, extract or oil. We using the artificial stuff. Adjust to suit your taste.
• 1/3 cup boiled water
• pinch of salt (adjust to suit your taste)

Glaze Instructions

Combine everything into a mixing bowl and blend together. We mix it all together in the KitchenAid 5qt mixer for about 5 minutes on speed 4-5. Stop and scrape once or twice to get a nice smooth glaze. Stopping and scraping down batters is a key step in almost all recipe making. You might have to adjust the consistency of the glaze thickness once you get going. If you find it to be too thick, just add in a teaspoon or two of hot water, give it a good stir and try again. If by chance you make the glaze too watery, no problem, just add a little bit of icing sugar. Don’t worry about the other ingredients.

Enjoy!