Sweet Redemption!

Last night I redeemed myself on two fronts: I overcame my brownie failure from the night before, and I succeeded with baked doughnuts! I promised Bill I would bake something to make up for my baking disaster on Friday night and while doughnuts may seem like a big risk, they were made much easier by one of my new kitchen accessories.

For my birthday, Tiff gave me a mini doughnut pan (which conveniently had a recipe on the packaging!). Obviously these were cake doughnuts, not yeast doughnuts, but it's a good second step toward making the real thing.

Baked Mini Cake Doughnuts
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups cake flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray mini doughnut pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, sift together cake flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt. Add buttermilk, egg, and butter. Stir until just combined. Fill each doughnut cup approximately half full. (This was tricky because the batter is somewhat thick. I filled each cup and then scooped a bit out so they weren't overflowing.)

Bake 4 to 6 minutes (oddly enough, my first batch took 6 minutes, but my second needed 7), or until the top of doughnuts spring back when touched. Note: Top of doughnuts will not be as golden as the bottom half in the pan. Color is not an indication of doneness.

Let cool in pan 4 to 5 minutes before removing. Finish with glaze, confectioners' sugar or sprinkles. Doughnuts are best served fresh.

I have an extreme fondness for cinnamon-sugar coated doughnuts, so I choose to bypass the glaze, confectioners' sugar or sprinkles. Instead, I melted 1 tablespoon butter in a large bowl, tossed the mini doughnuts in the butter to coat, filled a large Zip-loc bag with 1/4 cup sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon, and shook the buttered doughnuts in the bag. Voila! Delicious, sugar-y sweet mini cake doughnuts!

One important thing to note (aside from the color/doneness note in the recipe) is that your doughnuts are going to look more like mini bundt cakes. Maybe my cups were still a bit too full, but the tops rose well over the rim. But they were still cute. And, most importantly, yummy! Thank you, Tiff!