Fun Friday ~ Eggless Baked Doughnuts With Chocolate Glazing

The first recipe that kept popping up when I was looking for eggless donuts was Radhika's and I had noted it down to try for this marathon. These yeast based, baked doughnuts are not a substitute for the ones you get from the famous American franchise stores but were like soft, spongy rolls. I noticed that most yeast based ones in the web world looked pretty much the same. I had to use extra milk than the recipe mentioned. Otherwise it is a foolproof one as the original recipe promises to be. Don't skip the glaze as these doughnuts are pretty much bland without the frosting. I glazed them with a chocolate frosting as my daughter loves it but any other glaze can be used. 

Servings: 10 - 12
Ingredients for the doughnuts:
1/2 cup milk (I had to use 1/4 cup extra.)
1.5 tsp active dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups all purpose flour (1&1/2 + 1/2)
1 tbsp. corn starch
50 gm / Scant 1/4 cup butter
2 tsp. vanilla essence 
Ingredients for the chocolate glaze:
6 tbsp. chocolate chips / chopped chocolate (I used semi sweet chocolate chips)
2 tbsp. milk
1 tbsp. powdered sugar

Method:
* Pulse the 1/4 cup sugar finely and keep it aside.
* Warm 1/2 cup milk in a microwave for about 30 - 40 seconds. Stir in the yeast, salt and about 1 tbsp. powdered sugar (from above step) in the milk. Keep it aside for few minutes until the mixture turns frothy.
* In the mean while cut the hard, cold butter into cubes.
* To a mixing bowl add 1 & 1/2 cups flour, corn starch, yeast mixture, remaining powdered sugar and vanilla and mix. (At this point the original recipe mentioned that the dough would be sticky but mine was pliable.)
* Next add the cubed butter into the bowl and work it into the dough until all the butter is merged with the flour. (You don't need any mixer to prepare this dough as it is quite easy to incorporate the butter into the mixture.)
 
* Now add the remaining 1/2 cup flour and knead into a soft, pliable dough for about 4 -5 minutes. (At this point, my dough became dry because of the addition of flour and I had to add about 1/4 warm milk to work with it.)
* Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover and keep it in a warm place until it doubles in volume.

* Deflate the dough when it rises. Flour your work surface and roll the dough into 1/2 inch thickness. Use a doughnut cutter or 2 round shaped cookie cutters (3 inched and 1 inched ones) to cut out doughnut shapes. Collect the scraps and repeat the process until all the dough is used up. Basically you cut 3 inch diameter rounds with 1 inched diameter holes.

* Transfer the shaped doughnuts onto a greased baking sheet. Cover them with a towel and allow them to rest for about 20 minutes.

* Preheat the oven to 400 deg F during the last 10 minutes of resting.

* Bake the doughnuts for about 10 minutes or until it turns golden brown. 

* Remove the doughnuts from the oven and brush them with melted butter. Let them cool for five minutes.

* Place the glazing ingredients in a shallow/wide microwave safe bowl and microwave until it melts, stopping at 30 seconds intervals. Let the glazing turn warm.

* Hold the doughnut upside down and dip it in the glaze. Lift and   quickly turn it so the glazed side is up. Decorate with rainbow or chocolate sprinkles if desired.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51.

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An InLinkz Link-up

T for Tunisia ~ Tunisian Donuts / Ftira

Event: BM #44, Around the world (A - Z Series)

Choice of Country: The Tunisian Republic
Capital City: Tunis
Official Language: Arabic 

From West African nation of Sierra Leone, I am moving towards the northernmost region of Africa for my alphabet 'T". Tunisia to be precise. For the uninitiated, I am on a blogging marathon with a few other bloggers this month with the theme "Around the World in 30 days". Each day we pick a nation to cook from, going in an alphabetical order. And today we have reached the alphabet "T" in this culinary journey and I am going with some yummy donuts from the Tunisian region. 
Tunisia is situated on the Mediterranean coast of Northern Africa, midway between the Atlantic Ocean and Nile Delta. Tunisian cuisine is a blend of culinary traditions of Mediterranean and the desert dwellers and is quite spicy compared to other African nations. It offers a "Sun Cuisine", based mainly on olive oil, spices, tomatoes, seafood and lamb. A popular condiment / ingredient extensively used in Tunisian cooking is harissa. Cooking varies region wise and the couscous is the national dish.

This is one of the dishes that got made first for the marathon but I later kept contemplating whether to go with this choice or not. I had decided to try this version called ftira once I saw this recipe without researching anything about it. Later to my dismay I found out that there are other versions and the traditional versions of Tunisian donuts are supposedly called yo-yos / bambalouni. It got more confusing when the world "Ftira" kept leading me to flat breads from the Malta region. However after exercising my brain a little I realized that both the countries are in the Mediterranean region and probably because of the geographical proximity, there are chances that two different dishes may go by the same name. And being from India, I should have known about regional variations of a dish. This recipe had originally come from a Tunisian and so I guess it must be as authentic as it can get and truly Tunisian. :)

Ingredients: (yield about 10 - 12)
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup semolina flour
1 tbsp olive oil + about 2 tbsp extra
1.5 tsp dry instant yeast (I used active dry yeast instead of rapid rise yeast.)
3/4 cup lukewarm water (I used only 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp water.)
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Method:
* Add yeast, sugar and about 1/4 cup lukewarm water to a bowl. Mix well and leave it in a warm place for about 10 to 15 minutes, until it is frothy.
* Add flours, 1 tbsp oil, salt, yeast mixture and about 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Mix well, transfer it to a work surface and knead it to a smooth dough. 
(Add extra water in tbsp. increments if needed. I added about 5 - 6 tbsp of water excluding the 1/4 cup used for the yeast mixture. It still was on a sticky side and added about 1 tbsp extra oil.)
* Grease a bowl and transfer the dough to it. Flip the dough to cover it with a thin film of oil and cover the bowl. Set it aside for a few hours or overnight.
 
* When ready to make doughnuts, punch the dough down to deflate it. Roll it into a circle of about 1/3 inch thickness and cut circles out of the rolled out dough.
* Heat oil in a frying pan. When the oil is ready (about 375 deg F), drop the circles into the pan and fry on low flame until it is golden on both sides. They puff up while frying.

* Drain on absorbent towels. Serve hot with chocolate sauce / powdered sugar or honey.

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An InLinkz Link-up

Yeast Breads ~ Sweet Pull-Apart Bread

Event: Blogging marathon #40
Theme: Yeast based breads

I saw a monkey bread for the first time on American TV, about 15 years ago. The idea of pulling apart the chunks of bread seemed fascinating at that time. I have been planning  a pull apart bread since then and somehow the opportunity never came until now. In my quest, I landed at this recipe which was on the similar lines of a monkey bread. This recipe doesn't need the biscuits and the added bonus was my kids love cinnamon flavored bakes. The recipe uses bread machine and is easy, no fuss kind recipe. Recently I had stowed away my bread machine in the basement and was lazy to bring it up and so I hand kneaded the dough and baked in the convection oven instead. 
This recipe is very simple and reliable. There are no surprises springing up at you during any steps of the bread making and so even for novice bakers, it is good recipe to try. The dough balls are usually arranged in a bundt pan or cake pan but I layered them in a loaf pan. The shape wouldn't matter if you ask me since you are going to pull apart the pieces anyway to devour them. As expected, my kitchen was filled with cinnamon flavor while baking and the kids' who stepped into home a little later were inquiring whether I was baking any cinnamon buns. The texture of the bread pieces is somewhere between a cake and a bread. I have considerably reduced the brown sugar quantity when I made this bread and probably that's why it was not very gooey. That's a good thing if you ask me. The pieces were not sticking to your fingers and yet the bread was not bland. When you first bite into a bread piece, you encounter the sweetness but as you take more bites, the sweetness subsides because only a small quantity of sweetener went into the dough making. This was more than a super hit at my home and the bread was gone in about a day. 

Ingredients for the dough:
3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp instant yeast
4 tbsp butter
1& 1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 & 1/2 tsp vanilla

Ingredients for topping:
1/4 cup melted butter
2/3 cup light brown sugar mixed with 1 tbsp cinnamon

Bread machine method:
* Place all the dough ingredients into the bucket of a bread machine. Program the machine for dough and press start. After about 10 minutes of kneading, check the dough's consistency. It should be soft and smooth; though it should form a ball and clean the bottom and sides of the bucket. If necessary, adjust the consistency with additional flour and water and allow the machine to complete it's cycle.
* Lightly flour the work surface if needed. Divide the dough into 32 small pieces and shape them into balls. Dip the balls in the melted butter and roll them in the cinnamon - sugar mixture. Layer them in the bucket.
* Place them in the bucket, close the lid and allow the bread to rise until doubled, for about an hour. 
Program the machine for bake only, 65 minutes, light crust and press start.
* Let the bread stand for a few minutes when the baking cycle is complete. Remove the bucket from the machine and turn the bread out onto a serving platter.

Manual method:
* If preparing the dough manually, combine the ingredients in a mixing bowl and knead by hand for about 8 - 10 minutes. The final dough would be smooth and pliable, leaving not any residue on your fingers.

 * Lightly flour the work surface if needed. Divide the dough into 32 small pieces and shape them into balls.

* Dip the balls in the melted butter and roll them in the cinnamon - sugar mixture. 

*  I had lined the pan with foil as I didn't want to ruin the pan with those sugar stains.

* Place them in a loaf pan, cover it and allow to rise until doubled, for about an hour.

* Preheat the oven to 350 deg F / 175 deg C. Bake the bread for about 40 to 45 minutes.

* Let the bread stand for about 5 minutes and flip it on the serving platter. Serve warm.
* If serving on the next day, just zap them in microwave for few seconds before serving.

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Yeast Breads ~ No Knead Banana Bread

Event: Blogging marathon #40
Theme: Yeast based breads

We rarely run out of bananas as my husband keeps bringing them during each and every grocery trip. It is a fruit neither appreciated nor shunned at my home and somehow there are always a couple of bananas at the end, left hanging onto the stand. When the left overs are on their way to get overly ripened and attract fruit flies, I have to shrug off my lethargy and go search for recipes. Those kind of recipes where the final dish is appreciated by the majority of the family without an inkling about what went into it. In other words, baking does the trick most of the times. This time I was left with some more even after I had made muffins. And besides that, at the last minute the bulb went on that I had selected yeast breads as my theme for this week's marathon. I therefore went hunting for yeast based banana bread recipes so that I can kill two birds with one stone.
  
I ended up here during my quest and used the cardamom flavored rolls' recipe to bake a loaf. If you are looking for a bread with subtle banana flavor and a hint of sweetness, then this is the recipe you may like. It is not that sweet, quick bread kind where you dig into crunchy bits of walnuts with the goodness of banana flavor oozing from it. It is out and out a plain kind bread with perfect texture and goes well with a jam / jelly / Nutella spread. I would suggest to skip the cardamom if you are planning a loaf. Some how I didn't find the cardamom and the jam (or whatever spread you prefer) flavors jelling well. 
A very easy bread to put together manually and the fun part is you don't even need to knead. One would just need to combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and leave it to rise. It's that simple and quick - done under 5 minutes and cleanup is a cinch.

Ingredients: (1 loaf / 8 rolls)
1.5 tsp dry active yeast
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp sugar
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1/2 buttermilk or 1/2 cup milk + 1/2 tsp vinegar
1 cup mashed bananas
3 & 1/4 cups all purpose flour 

Method:
* If using milk and vinegar in place of buttermilk, combine both and leave aside for about 3 -4 minutes.
* Combine everything except the flour in a big mixing bowl. 
* Then add the flour and just mix well to combine. The resulting dough would be on a sticky side. 

* Cover and leave it to rise in a warm place for about 2 hours or until it doubles and collapses.

* Grease a loaf pan and transfer the dough to it. Cover the pan with a wet towel and leave aside to rise again for about 45 to 60 minutes.
* This recipe was originally for rolls. If you are planning to make rolls, refrigerate the dough for about 30 minutes so that it would be easy to handle while rolling them. Divide the dough into 8 portions, dust the working surface and shape them into rolls. Arrange the rolls in a greased cake pan, cover and allow to rise again for about 45 minutes.
* Preheat the oven at 350 deg F or 180 deg C. Bake for about 35 - 40 minutes till done and golden brown. Remove, cool and slice the loaf.

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