Let me start by saying that these apple doughnuts did not turn out the way they were supposed to – they taste great, but they look terrible. They are supposed to look like these ones from Bakers Royale – round like a real doughnut, with a hole in the middle. It turns out that while baking mine expanded and turned into a round pancake type doughnut with a flat bottom.
I decided to share them with you anyway because they are good, really good and they are baked, which makes them so much better in my opinion. I’ll try again, but not right now, because how many doughnuts, even baked, should we really be eating?
And yes, while we did skip ahead an hour this weekend and the sun is stronger, we still have a lot of snow in our yard…I can’t wait for it to melt!
Give them a try – don’t use too much dough when piping them on your cookie sheet and if you have a doughnut pan I think they’ll turn out great for you. Also, don’t use salted butter as I did mistakenly. I drizzled the icing on the doughnuts as I didn’t want them to be too sweet.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup lukewarm water
- 2 teaspoons dry active yeast
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 3 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
- 2 small apples, skins on or off depending on your preference, diced
- 3 3/4 cups Gold Medal All-Purpose Flour
- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
Instructions
- Place water, yeast, salt, eggs, sugar, apples, flour, and butter in a bowl, using a spoon or a sturdy spatula fold batter until evenly mixed.
- Let the dough rest at room temperature covered, for two hours. Transfer dough to refrigerator and chill for at least 3 hours.
- Remove dough from refrigerator. Transfer dough to a pastry bag fitted with a round tip and pipe 3-inch circles on to a parchment lined bake sheet (or alternately pipe into wells of a donut pan).
- Bake at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes. Remove from oven and transfer doughnuts to cooling rack.
- TO MAKE GLAZE: Place confectioner sugar in bowl and add one tablespoon of milk at a time and stir after each addition. Add more mik as needed to achieve a glazing pour
- ASSEMBLY: Place finished glaze in a bowl and dip tops of doughnuts into mixture. Return dipped doughnuts to cooling rack. I drizzled the glaze to limit the sweetness.
