On this occasion, I am putting up a sweet recipe – homemade eggless doughnuts. Few months back, my sister tried out these eggless doughnuts at home. They looked so beautiful and super inviting. I made a mental note to try her recipe. Being someone who doesn’t particularly love doughnuts, I kept putting it out until few days back. As luck would have it, sister forgot her recipe and thus began our search to figure it out again. Finally, we had put together a recipe and I started the preparation. The recipe is quite simple actually and you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to make these at home. The only point to take note is to make sure the yeast is active and the dough, proofed well. There are a few things I would change on my next attempt. I rolled the doughnut dough a little too thin that is required, so I did not get largish doughnuts as we see in stores. While cutting the doughnuts, I used a largish mould to cut the inner circle – I would change that too. All this said, it was something we all loved at home and I am sure will keep making regularly.
In a bowl add warm milk, powdered sugar and active dry yeast. Beat well until everything is mixed well. Let it sit for 5-10 mins until the mixture turns frothy.
In a bowl, add the all-purpose flour/maida, a generous pinch of salt and the yeast mixture. Mix everything together. Add some water if required and knead the dough until it can be held together as a ball.
Add ½ teaspoon of butter and knead again. Place the dough in a greased container and cover it with cling film. Set the dough in a warm place for an hour at least until it doubles up.
Slightly beat the dough to knock out the air. Take a ball of dough to roll while keeping the rest of it under cling film. Dust the surface and roll it into 1 cm thickness. Cut the doughnuts using a round mould and using a smaller sized mould make a hole in the center. Heat oil for deep frying. Set the flame on medium. Gently drop each doughnut and it should puff up as it cooks. As it gets golden brown on each side, remove it on to a tissue. Repeat the same with rest of the doughnuts.
Dip each doughnut in the chocolate sauce and in some colored sugar balls to have the choco doughnut. For plain doughnuts, just dust some powdered sugar on top.
The temperature of the milk is absolutely necessary to get the yeast activated. Too hot, yeast gets killed, too cold and yeast would not get activated. Leave the doughnut dough in a warm place to proof it up. I leave it in my oven, as my kitchen is cold. Powdered Sugar helps activate the yeast. Do not roll the doughnut dough too thin, to have store-bought like appearance. The proportion of the round moulds used to cut the doughnuts has to be right. My inner round was a little bigger and that is something I plan to improve the next time. The doughnuts were great straight out of the stove. They stayed good for a day but anything after that, store in fridge.
