Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Lemon Curd Filled Doughnuts

Shortly after making lemon curd, I decided to surprise The Mister's office with lemon curd filled doughnuts. I am not known for providing the prettiest desserts, but the bowl almost always returns empty especially for doughnuts. Remember the beignets? I've made them twice and the bowl returned empty at lunch time. So, looks aren't everything, right?


Lemon Curd Filled Doughnuts

Adapted from Jelly-Filled Doughnuts recipe from the Southern Living 1984 Annual recipes book, page 55

I used the recipe for the dough and stored the dough in the refrigerator overnight.
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 6 Tbsp butter
  • 2 packages yeast
  • 1/2 cup warm water
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour, divided

In a pot on low heat, cook milk, sugar, salt and butter until sugar dissolves and butter melts. Allow the mixture to cool.

In the mixer, put in yeast (I used the rapidrise bread machine yeast), water, egg yolks, 2 cups of flour, and the warm milk mixture. Beat with mixer and slowly add the remaining flour to the dough to get a smooth dough. (On this day, I added about 1 3/4 cup of flour.)

Put the dough in a greased bowl and allow to rise one hour.

Here's where I deviated from the instructions...

After allowing the dough to rise, I put the dough in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, I floured my surface to prepare for rolling and took the cold dough out of the refrigerator and rolled it onto my surface about a 1/2 inch thick. i cut the dough with my 2 1/4 inch biscuit cutter. (The Mister wanted them bigger, but to yield more, I used the smaller cutter. The recipe book suggests using a 3 inch cutter.) I placed the cut rounds onto a cookie sheet and allowed them to rise for another hour.

After an hour, I heated oil in my cast iron skillet (I don't have a fryer, but I can imagine keeping the temperature steady would be more easily done by using a fryer.) to 375 degrees F. I dropped a few doughnuts in and flipped them when they turned brown. It took about 15 seconds on each side. The book recommends cooking for one minute on each side, but I found that mine took a lot less time. Allow the doughnuts to drain and cool a little on paper towels.

To fill and glaze, I formed an assembly line and volunteered The Mister to help. The first station involved doughnuts on a stack of paper towels draining and cooling enough to handle. The second station involved filling the doughnuts with lemon curd. I used my Dessert Decorator by Wilton, but a piping bag or even a ziploc bag could be used to fill the doughnuts. (We were in a hurry to finish so some of the doughnuts were still quite warm when we filled them, thus causing the filling to ooze out.) The third station was glazing. I dipped one side into the glaze and allowed the doughnut to dry on cooling racks. Once dry, I dipped the other side and allowed it to dry on the racks.




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