Ingredients
- Serves 6500g strong white flour
- 50g caster sugar
- 40g unsalted butter
- 2 eggs
- 20g fresh yeast (bakeries, and supermarkets with bakery counters can supply this)
- 10g salt
- 150ml warm milk
- 100ml water
- Cinnamon sugar:300g caster sugar
- 3tbsp ground cinnamon (mixed together with the sugar and spread on a tray)
- Vanilla cream filling:500ml whipping cream
- 2tsp icing sugar
- 2 vanilla pods, scraped and seeds saved
- Sauce:500ml maple syrup
- 3 shots of bourbon
- Zest of half an orange
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 3 star anise
For the sauce: Add everything to a pot and boil hard until reduced to approximately 300ml of liquid. Set aside and keep warm For the doughnuts: Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk. Mix the remaining doughnut ingredients together. Knead for 10 minutes, or until smooth and elastic. Shape into 40g balls. Prove for one hour in a warm part of your kitchen. Pre-heat a deep fat fryer to 190 degrees Celsius. If you don't have a deep fat fryer, you can use a deep sided, heavy-based pot filled no more than half full of oil.
Drop in the doughnuts, in small batches, and fry for two to three minutes then tap with tongs to rotate and cook until golden – about another two minutes. Immediately roll them in the cinnamon sugar and leave to cool. For the cream filling: whisk everything together until stiff. When the doughnuts are cool, pierce a hole on the under side and pipe full with the vanilla cream.
To serve, stack them up and drizzle with plenty of the sauce. You should have 20-25 bite-sized doughnuts.
