October 2010 Daring Baker's Challenge: Doughnuts!

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

First of all I must say that I LOVE doughnuts. They're really delicious by themselves and with a chocolate glazing they're just heavenly! So, you can imagine my delight when I saw which was this month's challenge ^^

As it was my first time making them I decided to keep it simple and dip the doughnuts in a simple sugar glaze, to imitate the ones sold in every bakery.

The recipes:

Ingredients for doughnuts:

360 ml whole milk
70g butter
14g active dry yeast
80 ml warm water
1.5 tsp salt
55g white sugar
650g all purpose flour + extra for dusting surface
2 large eggs, beaten
Olive oil (depends on the size of the vessel you are frying in).

Method for the doughnuts:

1. Place the milk in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat just until warm enough to melt the butter.
2. Place the butter in a bowl and pour warmed milk over (make sure that the butter is melted). Set aside.
3. In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water and let dissolve for 5 minutes (it should get foamy). After 5 minutes, pour the yeast mixture into a large bowl and add the milk and butter mixture, first making sure the milk and butter mixture has cooled to lukewarm.
4. Add the eggs, sugar, salt, and the flour. The dough will be to sticky to knead by hand without adding a lot of extra flour and it will be very messy so just roughly combine the dough ingredients using a plastic scraper or wooden spoon. No need to knead too much; a longer resting/rising time is equivalent to kneading that is if you only roughly knead for one minute or so and let the dough rise for a longer time this is equivalent to kneading for a longer time (many thanks to Audax for the kneading instructions).
5. "Pour" (the dough won't be firm at this point, but don't panic, it's normal) to a well-oiled bowl, cover, and let rise for 1 and 1/2 hours or until doubled in size.

6. On a well-floured surface, roll out dough to 9 mm thick (make sure the surface really is well-floured otherwise your doughnuts will stick to the counter).
7. Cut out dough using a 65 mm doughnut cutter or pastry ring or drinking glass (I used a water glass) and using a 22 mm ring for the center whole (I used one of my piping tips). Set on floured baking sheet, cover lightly with a tea towel, and let rise for 30 minutes.
8. Preheat the oil in a deep fryer or Dutch oven to 185°C.
9. Gently place the doughnuts into the oil, 3 to 4 at a time. Cook for 1 minute per side or until golden brown (my doughnuts only took about 30 seconds on each side at this temperature).
10. Transfer to a cooling rack placed in baking pan. Allow to cool for 15 to 20 minutes prior to glazing, if desired.
    

Ingredients for the simple sugar glaze:

450 ml whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
440g confectioner's sugar

Method for the simple sugar glaze:

1. Combine the milk and vanilla over a medium saucepan and heat over low heat until warm.
2. Sift the sugar into the mixture. Whisk slowly until well combined
3. Remove the the glaze from the heat and set over a bowl of warm water (I left it over the heat, set at the minimum).
4. Dip the doughnuts into the glaze and let it drain.

The doughnut were great...the first day. Unfortunately the next day they were dry and not so good. The bright side is that there were only FOUR DOUGHNUTS LEFT! So most of the doughnut were eaten at their best ^^ I suppose that this means that people did like them, doesn't it?

Double chocolate chips cookies

This time of the year I see lots of food bloggers experiencing with pumpkins in the most various ways: cookies, cakes, tarts, cheesecakes... But around here we're not big fans of vegetables in our desserts (some restaurants and cafes are trying to introduce the carrot cake with poor results -_-U), not to talk that I've got food intolerance to the family of the Cucurbitaceae (pumpkin, cucumber, melon, watermelon...) so I'll be sticking to chocolate ^^

This is another recipe from the book Chocolate Galore (in Spanish is Chocolate a gogó). The original recipe from the book calls for dark chocolate and milk chocolate chip, but I went for milk chocolate chips instead of dark chocolate because I prefer them. This time I changed too the amount of sugar that the recipe states, using 100g instead of 150g.

The cookies are very good, my parents and my boyfriend said they're awesome, but I still prefer the chocolate and walnut cookies ^^

So, the recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:        

150g butter (at room temperature)
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100g white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
200g all-purpose flour
50g milk chocolate chunks or chips
50g white chocolate chunks or chips

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC.
2. Cream butter and sugar (add the sugar little by little) until light and fluffy.
3. Mix in the egg and then the vanilla extract until well combined.
4. In another bowl, mix together the flour and the baking powder and incorporate them to the butter.
5. Add the chocolate chips and mix well.
6. Take about a tablespoon of cookie dough and put it onto a baking tray. Repeat until you've got about 6 cookies on the tray (be careful when placing the dough because the cookies will double their size when baked).
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes until they brown.
8. Take the cookies out from the oven and let them cool for 2-3 minutes in the tray before transfering them to a wire rack. You can keep them for a week in an air-tight container.

Basic Spanish omelette

This dish isn't new for me, indeed I've make it lots of times, but I thought that it would be a good idea to share it because I've seen in internet some crazy recipes calling for medium eggs and load of potatoes O_O

The basic Spanish omelette uses one large egg and one medium sized potato per person (if you're making an omelette to feed 4 people then you must use 4 large eggs and 4 medium sized potatoes) apart from salt for seasoning and olive oil for frying. This is the very basic recipe, and from here you can make a wiiiiiiiide variety of omelettes. The most common ones add chorizo or ham and cheese or onion to the basic recipe or they put some topping on it (anchovies, peppers...). The options are uncountable: the Spanish omelette is like a sandwich, you can add anything to it and it will taste great ^^

Personally, I love it with chorizo or morcilla or garlic. The ham and cheese one also tastes good, but it's a bit more complicated to make because you can't add the ingredients to the mixture of egg and potatoes, you have to first put in the pan some egg and potato mixture, then layer the ham and the cheese and finally add some more egg and potatoes.

So, the recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:        

1 large egg per ration
1 medium sized potato per ration
Salt for seasoning
Olive oil

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a frying pan (about 1 inch).
2. Peel the potatoes and chop them very fine.
3. Season the potatoes with the salt.
4. Fry the potatoes in the preheated oil.
5. Beat the eggs and add a pinch of salt.
6. Take out the potatoes from the oil and add them to the eggs. Mix until well combined (this is the point in wich you could add other ingredients).
7. Put very little oil from frying the potatoes in another pan and heat it.
8. Put the egg and potato mixture into the pan and fry until the egg seems to be less runy.
9. Put a plate over the pan and flip it. Then add again very little oil to the pan and slide back into the pan the semi-cooked omelette. Cook for a minute or two and take it out.

Chocolate and walnut cookies

Yesterday I decided to give a try to these cookies because I still have in my pantry some of the walnuts that I bought for the Banana walnut cake.
I love these cookies, they're delicious! I couldn't stop eating them and was not at all willing to give some away to my boyfriend but, well, they were meant to be for him so I had already told him that I was making them...

This recipe comes from the book Chocolate Galore (in Spanish is Chocolate a gogó) wich was a present from my boyfriend for my last birdthday. The original recipe from the book uses white chocolate and pecans but, as I've said, I had walnuts instead, so I went on with them and my boyfriend prefers milk chocolate rather than white chocolate so I used that one. Another thing that I changed, apart from making half the ammount stated in the recipe, was the huge cuantity of sugar that it called for (in the original recipe it was 120g brown sugar and 150g white sugar) which doesn't suit our taste and scares the hell out of us thinking how our teeth are going to fall down if we dare to take a bit.
So, the recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:        

75g salted butter (at room temperature)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
30g brown sugar
40g white sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
150g all-purpose flour
50g chocolate chunks
50g toasted walnuts (chopped)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC.
2. Cream butter and sugar (add the sugar little by little) until light and fluffy.
3. Mix in the egg and then the vanilla extract until well combined.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients in order.
5. Take a small amount of cookie dough onto your palm and roll into a ball.
6. Put the balls onto a baking tray and press them slightly.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes until the borders brown.
8. Take the cookies out from the oven and let them cool completely in the tray before transfering them to a wire rack.