Vanilla Cream-Filled Doughnuts

Possibly the most ambitious thing I’ve ever cooked (maybe the mint chocolate Martha Stewart cake I made a few years ago with chocolate fondant, buttercream, AND icing was more so), but it was actually qite easy.  And oh so very, very delicious.

It was quite the all day affair, though.  I couldn’t get back to sleep this morning when Trixie woke up at 4am, so I went downstairs and made the dough (and then pancakes, which was a nice treat for everyone).  That takes 6 hours to rise in the fridge.  Then you cut the doughnuts, and let them rise for 2-3 hours.  And we have a cold house.  Then you fry them, which only takes a few minutes.  When they have to completely cool, and you fill them.  All said, it took about 11 hours.  Obviously, in the future I’ll read the directions ahead of time and let the dough do its first rising overnight.

The one eensy weensy little problem is that they didn’t cook all the way through.  I think next time I’ll turn down the heat of the oil just slightly and let them fry for a bit longer.  Raw bread dough wasn’t a great surprise when you bite into them.  The cream, however, is delicious and not hard to make at all, though it does have a few steps.

Now I want to go to Williams Sonoma and get that doughnut cookbook I saw there!  Just think, when I saw it I thought “who in their right mind would MAKE a doughnut?”  Me, apparently.  While it was an all-day endeavor, it wasn’t actually all that complicated, and the actual labor didn’t take terribly long.

Vanilla Cream-Filled Doughnuts, from Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe.  Pg 98.