Hippopotamousse: Sticky Chocolate Orange Donuts

It's day five of donut week and I tell you, I am surprised to find I am not yet sick of donuts (pleasantly surprised of course!)! I had no idea how versatile they could be - we've had vanilla donuts with raspberry icing, chocolate donuts coated in salted caramel, strawberry and custard filled donuts like you get in the bakeries here in the UK, wholewheat super healthy mango streusel breakfast donuts and today we are moving on to my favourite flavour combination, chocolate orange donuts!

These donuts are so sticky and orangey, part of me wondered whether baking them myself was a dream brought on my all these donuts and my intense love of chocolate orange. As it turns out I made them! Hooray! Now we can all have uber sticky donuts fresh out of the oven to share with family and friends or eat all to ourselves under the pretense that you need all that chocolatey goodness to ~~do revision~~ sit and read your favourite baking blogs whilst sipping a much needed cuppa.

The stickiness comes from the combination of the moistness of the donuts plus the chocolate powder and the orange glaze they were completely covered in. The glaze is literally just icing sugar and the juice of half an orange and thin enough to soak into the donuts, enhancing the orange flavour.

I used Bournville 100% cocoa solids cocoa powder so the chocolate flavour didn't need any enhancing!

These donuts are good mid morning, mid afternoon or after tea (dinner to none-Northern England folk!).

All work and no play makes for very short posts, I am sorry, it also makes me forgetful and do silly things like only putting the finished photos on photobucket to put on here and not the baking process ones but I will rectify that as soon as possible - here is the recipe, I hope it makes up for it.

Ingredients

For the donut:
(makes 4 massive ones, 5 optimal, 6 if scrimping)
70 g self-raising flour
25 g cocoa powder (I used Bournville 100% cocoa solids)
60 g granulated sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
50 g plain Greek yoghurt (I used low fat)
20 ml milk (I used semi-skimmed)
1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste (or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract)
10 g unsalted butter
1 medium free-range egg
zest of 1/2 an orange

For the glaze:
60 g icing sugar
6 tsp orange juice (approx. 30 ml)
optional tsp orange zest to decorate

Directions

1. Pre heat the oven to 170 degrees C and take two mixing bowls. In the smaller of the two combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and sugar and mix together well.
2. In the bigger mixing bowl mix together the yoghurt, milk, vanilla bean paste, unsalted butter, egg and the zest of half an orange. Make sure you combine these ingredients well at this stage.
3. Transfer the dry ingredients into the larger mixing bowl and combine all the ingredients minimally, just until they are incorporated so as not to overwork the gluten in the flour.
4. Transfer your mixture into a piping bag with a large nozzle (1cm diameter approx.) and pipe the mixture into your donut pans. This mixture is quite firm so you can fill the pans to the top and not have to worry too much about overspill as for the most part the mixture holds its shape (unless you've filled it so full it's already over flowing before it's even in the oven!)
5. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes, mine took exactly 12 minutes but obviously it depends on the temperature of your oven.
6. Leave the donuts to cool for about 10 minutes before you take them out the pan. I find that gently, and I mean really gently, twisting my mini individual pans like I am unscrewing a drinks bottle works best. When I tried to remove them with a palette knife I destroyed the clean lines of the base no matter how careful I was.
7. Whilst the donuts are cooling in their tins you can set about making the glaze. It took me 60 g of icing sugar to glaze mine but you will need to increase this if you have made 5 or 6 donuts (use 90 g and 9 tsp for 6 donuts). I use exactly 10 g of icing sugar for every teaspoon of orange juice I use. I find this to be the perfect consistency for a glaze - I see some funny looking 'glazes' that look an awful lot like icing on the web I tell ya! (glaze (gl z) n. 1. A thin smooth shiny coating.) Combine the icing sugar with the orange juice and mix together to form a smooth thin paste in a shallow edged bowl. I added a drop of Sugarflair Tangerine/Apricot Gel Paste to add a bit more colour to my glaze.
8. Before the donuts have cooled completely take a long handled wooden spoon and slot a donut onto it. Dip it in the glaze and rotate it (like you're pushing a toy car along) until the donut is completely covered. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack and repeat with the other donuts. Feel free to decorate with a sprinkling of orange zest, but if you're not too worried about presentation/want to eat them as soon as possible then I wouldn't bother.
9. Once the donuts have cooled either put in a tin straight away or serve, share, eat and ENJOY immediately with a grand cup of tea. :)

MORE DONUTS!!

Yesterday's post: Wholewheat Breakfast Donuts with a Mango Streusel Topping