Vanilla Bean Baked Donuts with Raspberry Icing to Kick off DONUT WEEK 2013!!!

OK so I discovered that Donut Week is the 11th - 18th May this year (maybe every year who knows) a while ago and have been obsessing about donuts ever since. I am so excited to share what I think is the best thing I have ever baked with you - so excited that I am writing this post early and queuing it!

The beauty of this pink sparkly tasty treat is that it looks fabulous but is SO simple to make. This Vanilla Bean Baked Donut is so moist and chewy and everything a donut should be, yet it is baked... and therefore... drum roll please... a healthy donut. (I realise I am quite late jumping on the baked donut band wagon but if you've ever tried to buy a donut pan in the UK that doesn't involve mail ordering from the US you'd understand why) Actually, what makes this recipe healthy is the 50g of Greek yoghurt that goes into it and the amount of butter that has NOT gone into it - there is a mere 15g of butter in this recipe!

In the end I had to settle for mini Savarin pans from Lakeland as the only other donut mould I could find was a horrifyingly 'mini' (this is the most inappropriate use of the word 'mini' I have ever seen, microscopic is probably closer to the truth) silicone one.

I was expecting to have to alter and faff on forever to come up with the perfect baked donut recipe (mostly because I baked these at 10pm and therefore was asking for a disaster - had one occurred it would be Hannah's fault for ignoring me to read Game of Thrones boo hoo hoo I was FORCED into baking them completely against my will...) despite reading comments and reviews of many many many recipes on the web. I altered my amounts relative to one another the best I could with the knowledge I had acquired and oh my goodness gracious me IT WORKED!

I left them to cool, popped the lid on the tin, got very little sleep due to our new upstairs neighbours Mr and Mrs which-one-of-us-can-make-the-most-unholy-sound-for-the-greatest-length-of-time squawking birds, woke up, went to my last lecture of the year (crikey time flies) iced and glittered these little beauties, ate two in one sitting and did absolutely no work whatsoever - it's been a glorious day!

I have to say the most exciting part was waiting for Hannah to come home and confirm my suspicion that they are one of the best things I have ever baked!



Back to the topic of donut pans - do any of my readers from the UK know of anywhere I can get a 6 cavity pan for under a tenner that doesn't require me to part with £3 for P&P nor does it ask me to wait 23 days for delivery from the US!?!?! Making 4 donuts at a time is NOT ENOUGH! Trust me, you'll understand when you try them mmmmmmmmm :)

Ingredients

This recipe makes enough for a six cavity donut pan if you scrimp a bit, makes for five cavities very nicely and if you're a bit silly like me you can overflow 4 cavities with this recipe splendidly. (I advise you make 5 and fill each cavity 2/3 - 3/4 full) 

For the vanilla bean baked donuts:
95 g self-raising flour
60 g granulated sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
15 g unsalted butter melted
1 medium free range egg
50 g plain Greek yoghurt (I used the low fat version because that's what Hannah eats with her Honey and Pecan Granola)
20 ml milk (I used semi-skimmed)
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

For the raspberry icing:
5-7 (a toddlers handful) raspberries if using frozen use the larger amount, fresh the smaller amount
15 g seedless raspberry jam
15 ml milk (I used semi-skimmed)
110 g icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
EDIBLE GLITTER to decorate!!

Directions

1. Pre heat oven to 170 degrees C and grease your donut pan if you need to.
2. You need 2 mixing bowls for this, take the smaller and to it add the self-raising flour, baking powder and granulated sugar. Mix well.
3. In the other mixing bowl (your best mixing bowl for the best baked donuts!) combine the melted butter, egg, yoghurt, milk and vanilla bean paste and mix well. I love the little black vanilla dots so much! (Vanilla bean paste is new to my kitchen, it being so expensive and me being a student, so it is perfectly acceptable to get excited about the posh black dots right??!!)

4. Add the contents of the dry bowl to your best mixing bowl and mix together efficiently so as not to overwork the gluten in the flour.
5. Transfer the mixture to a piping bag and pipe the donut batter into the cavities (remember 5 is the optimum, 6 if scrimping, 4 if going a little wild!).
6. Bake in the middle of your oven for 9 - 11 minutes, before they even think about turning golden brown but when a cocktail stick comes out clean. You want the donuts to be a pale creamy colour (like an egg-less sponge cake). The two photos below were taken at night under poor artificial lighting, the back half of the full donut in the second photo is an accurate colour guide!

7. Leave the donuts in the pan for 15 minutes before turning them out. The ones I tried to get out with a palette knife were messy when turned over, I found it best to gently turn the tops of them like you are unscrewing a juice bottle - but VERY gently - then turn them over and let the fall out on their own accord. This way produced perfectly round bottoms!

8. Once the donuts are completely cool you can set about making the icing. If you are using frozen raspberries boil the kettle, pour the water over them and leave them to sit in it for a couple of minutes, if using fresh grab 'em! Add the raspberries to a cereal sized bowl (one of those proper cereal bowls, not the teeny tiny sort of cereal bowl you'd eat the suggested serving of special K in) and dollop in a table spoon of seedless raspberry jam. Mix together to form a paste.
9. Weigh out 110 g of icing sugar and add it to the raspberry paste about 25g at a time (just more than a quarter of what you weighed out) until you get a thick consistency that will be easy to spread but won't run wild and free down the sides of your donuts (well not too much anyway). I did actually end up using all 110 grams. Mix mix mix mix mix until very smooth and the icing sugar is well combined.

10. Palette knife the icing onto your donuts rather generously and sprinkle with groovy coloured sugar or something just as funky! If you scroll down you'll see the multi-coloured sugar I used, It's a pretty sizable tub and I found it in TK Maxx for £3.99! Again if you really want to use 6 cavities you will have to be frugal with the icing, I'm telling ya 5's the magic number! :)

11. Eat, share hoard away in your room so only you can eat them, and ENJOY :)