Apple Cider Donuts

Hi, I'm Heather Bertinetti for eHow.com. Today, I want to share with you my recipe for apple cider donuts. Going to the farm as a child, going apple picking and getting those delicious cider donuts a the end of it was such a treat for me. I just have to recreate it. So let's get started. So here I have five eggs I'm going to crack into a bowl and now the thing with cider donuts is they're a cake-like donut so we use quite an amount of flour in here, great. So now with the paddle attachment in our bowl here, I'm going to add our brown sugar, get that in there, my spices. I have nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice, put that in and we're just going to mix this at low speed just to get it all incorporated. Now at this point I can add my eggs slowly, one by one making sure to incorporate them all, awesome. Next I'm going to add my butter. This butter I've had sitting out a little bit at room temperature, put in a little bit at a time, let's put all that butter in. So now I can kick my speed up just a little bit to medium, just make sure all that butter is incorporated. So unlike a cookie dough when making a cakey donut, we start with most of our wet ingredients first and then the dries go at the end. We're building the structure of the cake of the donut. So now that our butter is broken down to almost a pea size consistency. At this point we can stream in our apple cider. It's going to get quite liquidy so we can turn down our speed, great. Now at this point, I'm going to slowly add all my flour. Now it seems like quite a bit of flour but remember we're making a cake batter. It's not a yeasted donut. Okay so now that all my flour is incorporated, I'm going to add my salt, my baking soda and my baking powder. The baking powder is what is going to give it that structural rise and the salt brings out all that good apple flavor. I'm going to kick it on to medium speed just to make sure everything is incorporated, that's it, be sure to get it all off, set this aside. And now I have a sheet pan here, a little bit of parchment paper and I'm going to take some flour and I'm going to generously coat this in flour, just like so. Then I'm going to pour my dough out right in the center, beautiful. Okay guys, so now with my spatula I'm just going to spread this out, hold your paper down. If your paper starts to slide, one little quick tip is you can just Pam spray the paper down and bring this dough right to the edge. So now once all my dough has moved all the way to the edges, you can see that it is not quite even so here's a quick way to even this out. Using another sheet of paper, I'm going to fold this in half, flour the top of my surface once again just like so, put the other piece of paper on top and with my hands I'm going to squish it out. It's okay if it goes over the edges. It's going to be flat and even and that's it. So now we're going to pop this in the freezer for about an hour and then we'll cut them and fry them. Okay guys so now I've taken my dough out of the freezer and I've popped it out of the pan straight onto a surface. Using a round cutter like so we're also going to use a smaller round cutter to make the hole in the middle. You can also fry those off as munchkins. That's a little fun too. So take my large cutter and we're going to cut circles out and put them on another sheet pan. While I'm doing this my oil has been heating on my stove and of course, a tall pot like we always say. Whenever we fry anything in oil the oil will rise up so you always want to make sure you have enough leeway at the top so it doesn't overflow and spill and of course, cause a fire. Okay so at this point we're going to take our little cutter and aim right for the center and we'll cut the hole out. Do that on the next one. Now if the dough starts to get too hot, if you have a really hot kitchen, just stick it back in the refrigerator or the freezer for about 10 to 20 minutes and you can go back to cutting. Great, so now all the holes are cut out of our donuts. If you have a fryer at home or you are putting a thermometer in your oil, your oil temperature should be around 350 to 375 degrees. They will sink to the bottom as we drop these in and they'll float up to the top. So in this size pot I can get in about five at a time. I'm using what's called a spider. You can use a slotted spoon. I'm just going to gently move these around. So now that our donuts have floated to the top and we've fried them for about two more minutes, they're ready to be drained on paper towels. They crack a little bit because this is a very loose batter due to all the apple cider but that's good because that means they're going to be moist. That's exactly what we're looking for in a cider donut. So while they're still warm the best thing to do after they're drained on a paper towel is we're just going to roll them in a little bit of cinnamon and sugar, do a couple at a time and I love to serve these warm so the sooner you get them to your guests, the better. So that's it guys, there's our donuts. Wasn't that so super and simple to make. I'm Heather Bertinetti. Check this recipe out again on eHow.com.