GF/DF Old Fashioned Donuts

Plain Donuts
2 cups Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp fine salt
2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp dairy free butter (Country Crock Plant Butter)
2 egg yolks
1 cup dairy free sour cream (Good Karma)
oil for frying

Chocolate Donuts

1 1/2 cups Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp fine salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp dairy free butter (Country Crock Plant Butter)
2 egg yolks
1 cup dairy free sour cream (Good Karma)
oil for frying

Sugar Glaze (Thick)

1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tbsp almond milk

Sugar Glaze (Thin)

1 cup powdered sugar
2 tbsp almond milk

Chocolate Ganache Glaze

10 oz dairy free semi-sweet chocolate chips (Enjoy Life)
1 cup coconut cream

In a small bowl, prepare your wet ingredients. With a rubber spatula, cream together the dairy free butter and sugar. Add the egg yolks and combine until the mixture is completely yellow. Stir in the dairy free sour cream until smooth. Set aside.

In a large bowl, prepare your dry ingredients. Sift together flour, baking powder, xanthan gum, salt, and if applicable, nutmeg (also add cocoa powder here and omit nutmeg if making chocolate donuts).

Pour your wet ingredients mixture on top of the dry ingredients and stir. Mix everything together until a soft dough forms. Dough will be a bit sticky but will hold its shape.

Form the dough into a smooth ball. Using a scale to weigh, separate dough into 2oz balls, rolling each in your palms to make them smooth. You should achieve 15 balls (if you have any left over, use the dough to make donut holes).

Using the handle of a wooden spoon (or just using your fingers), poke a hole in the center of each ball of dough and gradually stretch it out.

In a large pot, or a deep fryer, heat oil to 350˚F. Carefully place 2-3 donuts in at a time and let fry for 4 minutes, turning donuts over after 2 minutes to cook evenly.

Donuts will be crispy and golden brown when they are finished. Remove from oil with a slotted metal spoon and place on a layer of paper towels to dry out.

Let donuts completely cool before topping.

To make the thick sugar glaze, mix together sugar and almond milk with a fork or whisk, until smooth. Add food coloring if desired. Dip top of donut until it is submerged only halfway to achieve a thick coating on top of the donut. Let access drip off donut for 1-2 minutes before setting donut back down. Top with sprinkles before the icing completely dries.

To make the thin sugar glaze, mix together sugar and almond milk. Completely submerge donuts in this glaze and let dry out on a cooling rack to achieve the glazed donut.

To make the chocolate ganache, start with preparing the coconut cream. Move coconut cream from the can to a medium bowl. There will be a large layer of thick cream and a small amount of liquid to follow. Stir parts together with a whisk to combine into a consistent and smooth cream. Then, measure out 1 cup and 10oz of dairy free chocolate chips and place in a heat-safe bowl. Place in the microwave for 15 seconds at a time, up to 1 minute, stirring between each interval. Chocolate and cream will come together in a smooth, shiny ganache to have donuts dipped. Dip top of donut until it is submerged only halfway to achieve a thick coating on top of the donut. Let access drip off donut for 1-2 minutes before setting donut back down. Top with sprinkles before the icing completely dries.

Plain donut is best enjoyed the next day.

Ok, don't be overwhelmed by the recipe you see above. It looks like there's a lot of ingredients, but it's actually just a lot of the same things rearranged so you have options! Plain donuts, glazed, chocolate donuts with chocolate on top... You can do it all! And they're all very simple.

So, why dairy free? It's pretty obvious that I do a lot of gluten free recipes because I have a gluten intolerance and I want to eat all these treats. But I also want to share with others. It makes me happy to include those who wouldn't typically be able to be included. My nephew has a pretty bad dairy allergy that can't just be prevented with lactose free products, so when my husband and I visit my nephew and his family, I like to bring something he can enjoy too. That's where these donuts came from.

These donuts are one of my greatest baking successes. I knew what I wanted to do but I was scrambling a little bit to find solutions to problems like raw dough, sandy donuts, and grainy ganache. Somehow it all came together really well, and it wasn't even as challenging as I expected!

And, you know me, I only want good dessert. Not OK or good enough for gluten free. So, please trust me when I tell you these are awesome. I keep eating them and thinking, "Wow! I made something really great!". The plain donuts with the thick white icing and sprinkles teleporting me back to Tim Horton's, being a kid, and eating a Vanilla Dip donut. Yeah. The one with a thousand sprinkles. Even I was in shock.

HOWEVER.

I have some rules for you.

The chocolate donut is great, right away. Yummy. Chocolate-y (but not too chocolate-y). Crispy.

The plain donut with the nutmeg is actually better the day after though. It's still good fresh, but it's kind of too spongy right away for me. I left these donuts out on the kitchen table overnight, and when I ate one the next day (I mean, they were just sitting there, what did you expect?), I was really surprised. There wasn't any of that stale air taste trapped inside, and the spongy texture was replaced with a really comforting, slightly dense crumb. Just like my Nana makes. To me, this is what makes an old-fashioned donut.

So please don't judge right away on the plain. Maybe give it a day and then let me know what you think.

Let me walk you through the process.

The start is pretty simple. I actually like doing this recipe by hand since the machine can't quite reach the bottom of the bowl. These ingredients are easy on my shoulder (I have a SLAP tear in my stirring shoulder - ouchie) so I enjoy the easy mixing. So cream together your dairy free butter (I found mine at Giant Eagle Market District in the vegan section) and sugar, and then add your egg yolks and mix. I like this part because it's so bright and reminds me of a sugar scrub. Plop some dairy free sour cream in there too (Target!) and stir everything together until it's smooth and looks like banana pudding. Yum! Don't eat it though.

In a separate bowl, sift in your dry ingredients. Remember, if you're making chocolate, it uses less flour and no nutmeg and you have to sift the chocolate powder. It gets all clumped up and will make your donuts just have random dry balls in there. Gross, don't do it. I mean do sift though.

Then, just scrape your wet ingredients into the flour bowl and stir until it comes together as a nice, soft dough. The chocolate dough will be a bit more sticky, but that's okay.

I usually turn my deep fryer on at this point so it's hot when I finish forming donuts. I love my deep fryer, by the way. I thought it was going to be a big angry monster, but it's actually way more comfortable to use than just a big pot of oil on the stove. It regulates the temperature on it's own and has a cover I can place right on top. There's also a built in basket so I can lift and lower everything all at once!

This is where you really start getting messy. I like to lay out a sheet of parchment paper on the counter so when I'm working, the dough and crumbs are contained a bit. You can also use it to tip the dough out of the bowl and knead it into a ball so everything is mixed together smoothly.

Please use a scale here. I tested these donuts a gazillion times to make sure everything was just right. Bigger than 2oz balls of dough made a donut that was too big and didn't cook all the way though. Smaller wasn't bad, but would really be better as a donut hole at that point. I tried using my donut cutter too instead of forming by hand, but they were just too wide and thin. SO WE DID IT RIGHT OK.

So, after measuring out 2oz balls of dough, roll them into smooth balls and poke your finger through the center. The goal here is to make this hole a little bigger and smooth, so I employ the bored-swinging-your-keys method here. You kind of spin the donut around on your finger for a second to stretch out the center. Be careful though! You don't want it to fly away and die on the floor.

Now they're ready for the fryer. Gently drop in two or three donuts into the oil and let them sizzle for two minutes. Turn them over with a metal spoon and let them sizzle on the other side for another two minutes. Then, take them out and place them on a sheet of paper towels to dry off and cool! If you want your donuts even crispier, dunk them in a bowl of flour before they hit the fryer. I love how crunchy they get on the outside.

So, your donuts are all fried and cooled and you remembered to turn your fryer off. Now you can top them with a billion different type of sweet and pretty things. I always have to do a mixture of everything because I could never pick a favorite topping. Sometimes it's just a classic glazed donut, but other times I really want a pretty sugar topping with loads of designer sprinkles.

Sprinkles are surprisingly tricky when it comes to food allergies! You might assume they are just all sugar in different shapes, but those metallic rods are almost always a tiny piece of raw pasta with a sugar coating, and many custom sprinkle bags have sixlets (chocolate/dairy). I looked around and found Baking Time Club from the UK. They ave great prices, are top quality, and everything is gluten free and vegan. I spent over $40 on my first purchase here. I have so many sprinkles right now. You can also make your own mix! Wilton sells tiny bags of a single type of sprinkle in craft stores, so I used inspiration from one of my favorite sprinkle mixes that was unfortunately not dairy free, and I recreated it by gathering up the individual pieces. I thought that would be crazy expensive, but since I could purchase small amounts of each piece, it was actually very manageable (and fun).

Go to town. It's donut time. For everyone!