Hippopotamousse: British Bakery Strawberry and Custard Filled Donuts

Welcome to day 3 of donut week! Today's post is British Bakery Strawberry and Custard Donuts! (really that should be doughnuts but for consistency I am continuing with donuts) I may be being presumptive calling them British bakery donuts but I live in Britain and these are exactly like the donuts my mum used to bring home for my brother and me on a Saturday afternoon (and fill with extra jam because there was just never enough!). Again, these donuts are baked but if you served them up to oblivious guests they would not be able to tell the difference!

The fact that these donuts are baked, and like the others contain very little fat, makes it completely acceptable to coat them in monstrous amounts of sugar.

As I have mentioned in a previous post my piping bag was stolen so getting the jam and custard in these bad boys was a very difficult task, the plastic food bag I used was too flimsy to get a good aim into the donuts so consequently I ended up with jam and custard EVERYWHERE! I am talking up to my elbows and in my hair everywhere.

I used a custard recipe from a Hummingbird Bakery book which proved to be a rather regrettable experience as without a good small whisk it went lumpy but I shall post the recipe nonetheless as it tasted divine once whizzed in a food processor to make it smooth smooth smooooooth. Really I should have just stuck with the fail safe Hairy Bikers Easy Creamy Vanilla Custard recipe which is far more forgiving to those lacking a decent whisk but the Hummingbird Bakery recipe really was delicious and once I tried a custard donut I wouldn't have changed it for anything!

I must get on with the recipe now because my first year final exams begin next week and I need my sleep to ummm ~~do productive revision~~ bake more donuts. No really I must revise, WHERE is my motivation to do anything other than bake!!? Oh university, why must you make my sweet tooth suffer? OK.. that's a bit of an exaggeration as I seem to find an awful lot of time to stuff my face when revising! (but with shop bought treats rather than the good stuff time being of the essence and all that!) Three weeks and it's all over. Phew.

Ingredients

(makes 12 rather large donuts using a 5 - 6 cm cutter)

For the donuts:
85 ml milk (I used semi-skimmed)
50 g granulated sugar
7 g sachet of dried fast acting yeast
200 g strong white flour
1 medium egg
1 tsp lemon juice
25 g unsalted butter

For the sugar coating:
30 g unsalted butter, melted
6 tbsp caster sugar (truth be told I used granulated and put it in my food whizzer for about 20 seconds)

For the custard: (adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery, Home Sweet Home)
110 ml milk (I used semi-skimmed)
2 tbsp double cream
1 medium egg yolk
1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste
20 g granulated sugar
6 g cornflour
6 g plain flour (I actually used self-raising flour as I didn't have any plain in and it turned out just fine)

For the jam:
5 tbsp strawberry jam (seedless or seeded, whatever you prefer)

Directions

1. Firstly take the butter out of the fridge to bring it to room temperature. Then heat the milk just until it boils then let it cool until it is the same temperature as your little finger. Add 1 tsp of sugar and the sachet of yeast to the milk and leave alone for 15 minutes so the yeast can work its magic. When you come back to it an even foam should have formed on the surface of the milk.
2. In a mixing bowl combine the flour and sugar then create a well to pour your wet ingredients into. Add the butter, egg, lemon and yeast/milk/sugar mixture to the well.
3. Fold the ingredients in and then knead for about five minutes until you have a smooth, malleable ball of dough.
4. Place the dough in a clean bowl and cover with clingfilm. Leave for 2 hours until the dough has doubled - tripled in size.
5. Knead the dough again for a couple of minutes then roll out on a floured surface to a thickness of 2 cm. (As you can see my ruler doesn't start its measurements at the very end so this is a guesstimate really!)

6. Take a 5 - 6 cm cutter and cut out as many circles from the dough as you can get, re-kneading it for a few seconds and re-rolling when the dough has become too awkward to get any more out of - waste not want not!

7. Put the dough circles on a lined baking tray, cover with lightly oiled clingfilm and leave for at least an hour, until they have doubled in every direction like so:

Don't panic if yours aren't as big as mine, I left them clingfilmed on the counter overnight so I could bake then fresh in the morning.
8. When you are ready to bake them pre heat the oven to 170 degrees C and bake for 10 - 12 minutes. Mine took exactly 11 minutes. Really make sure you watch them carefully as they can go from nicely browned to oh my days what a waste of time browned in next to no time!
9. Melt the 30 g of butter - I am talking really melt it, zap it in the microwave until it hisses at you melt it - and put 6 tbsp of caster (granulated whizzed into caster) sugar in a shallow sided bowl or on a plate. Take the donuts one at a time, coat in butter using a pastry brush and dip into the sugar - dip it real good! I tried to cheat here by washing them with butter all at once but by the time I'd done about three donuts the butter wasn't as melty and sticky - more fool me for being in such a hurry!

10. Leave the donuts to cool for about ten minutes.

11. Now for the exciting bit - the filling! To make the custard (which, if you are efficient, you could make whilst the donuts are in the oven) firstly place the milk in a pan with 2 tbsp double cream and bring to the boil.
12. In a large cereal bowl or jug whisk together the egg yolk, sugar, cornflour, flour and vanilla bean paste. If this paste is too thick add a tablespoon of boiled milk to thin it.
13. Pour half of the milk into the paste and whisk together well.
14. Take the milk off the hob and add the milk/paste mix to the pan whisking (I say whisk to be technically correct but what I did was more like 'beat the crap out of') continuously
15. Whisk whisk whisk whisk whisk whisk whisk whisk.
16. Return pan to the heat and bring back to the boil WHISKING like a person possessed for 3 - 4 minutes. Leave the custard to cool.
17. Fill a piping bag with the jam or the custard whichever you fancy first, or if you have two piping bags (you lucky devil you) fill one with each!
18. Take the cooled donuts and in both sides (one at a time) make a hole with a skewer, or even better, with a very cylindrical handled piece of cutlery. Leave whichever utensil you chose in whilst piping the jam or custard into the doughnut. Pipe it in one side until the donut has expanded - it looks a little like it is breathing out - or a more reliable marker is until stickiness starts overflowing, then do the same to the other side so you have a nice plump heaven filled donut. I filled half my donuts with jam and the other half with custard.