Chocolate Doughnuts

               
                        " Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty. "
                                                                 ~Lora Brody

              I had been holding back on serious baking ever since the fifth member of the family came home. Or   should I say all the four members where holding me back (utilizing all my free time)? Well, but you cannot afford to be inactive for so long. Some or other events spring up in life to make you find time to do the pushed back experiments and make you more and more prone to multitasking.

              It was chocolate day in the elder one's school and I had to make something chocolaty. I asked him what he wanted and the reply was pert. Chocolate Doughnuts! Boy! Isn't it yummy? For just once, I had to forget about those warning signs like 'high carb', 'high fat' and 'junk'. Caving into pressure (or was it caving into temptation?) I decided to make a batch of simply scrumptious doughnuts topped with chocolate glaze. I adopted the recipe from here and it turned out great. The only change I made to the recipe was added a pinch of salt too.

            I preferred baking to deep frying, but unfortunately I didn't have a doughnut pan. So decided to try my luck at deep frying. It was not that easy to maintain the shapes of the doughnuts. Even after reading a lot about the technique, I was quite on the edge while frying them as many lost their exact circular shapes. I stored the distorted ones for home use and send the pretty ones to school. Needless to say, the son was all smiles when he left for school with a bunch of glazing yummy doughnuts packed securely in his bag. Usually it's hard to wake him up in the morning and while dressing up, he would find all the excuses in the world to suggest that he should bunk the classes; of which some of the popular ones are like..'he is sick of hearing the teacher's crass voice all day' or 'he is gonna miss me all the morning' :)

               So it was great to see him up like lightning, dress up with zeal and cheerfully get into the school bus with his proud accomplishment in the back pack. And I must confess that I forgot all about 'healthy eating habits' when I had all those leftover doughnuts at home. But who am I to  resist such tremendous temptations? ;) The chocolates in the fridge where all eaten up by the boys. They dig into the fridge whenever I forget to lock it, and hence there was very little chocolate left over. As I had no time for shopping, I had to make the glaze with the available chocolate. So my glaze got a little thinned out as you can see from the pictures.

Doughnut Recipe 

To make Doughnuts:
(Makes 30 standard sized Doughnuts)

4 tsp active dry yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1 cup lukewarm milk
3 tbsp powdered sugar
1/4 tsp salt
100g butter, melted
4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 eggs
Vegetable oil for deep frying.

      Place the yeast, water,milk and 1 tbsp sugar in a bowl. Close with a lid and set aside for 10 minutes to rise.
     Sieve the flour into a wide bowl and add butter, eggs, remaining sugar and the yeast mixture into it and mix with a butter knife until a sticky dough forms.
     Bring the dough together by kneading on a lightly floured surface. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cower with a damp cloth and set aside in a warm place for one hour or until double in size.
     Knead the dough and de airate it on a lightly floured surface for 5 minutes or until it feels smooth and elastic.
     Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to 1 inch thick. Cut 3 1/4 inches rounds with a cutter. You can use the mouth of a glass or cap of a jar to do it. Cut 11/4 inches rounds from the middle of it.

     Place the dough rings carefully on a tray lined with non stick baking paper, cover with a damp cloth and set aside in a warm place for 30 minutes or until risen.

     Heat oil in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook the doughnuts a few at a time for 1 minute on each side or until golden. For tips on how to handle the dough to retain the shapes of doughnuts please refer here.
     Drain briefly on paper towels.
To make Chocolate glaze:

   2 cups confectioners sugar/icing sugar, sifted
   1/2 cup unsalted butter
   1/4 cup whole milk, warmed
   1 tbsp light corn syrup
   2 tsp pure vanilla extract
   4 ounces( 120g)  bitter sweet chocolate, chopped

     Sift icing sugar into a small bowl through a fine mesh sieve and set aside.
     Combine butter,milk, corn syrup and vanilla in a saucepan and heat over medium heat until butter is melted.
     Decrease the heat to low, add chocolate and whisk until melted.
     Turn off heat, add the confectioners sugar and whisk until smooth.

Assembling the Doughnuts:

   Place the chocolate glaze over a bowl of warm water.
   Dip the doughnuts immediately.
   Place on wire racks to cool completely and allow the glaze to set for 30 min before serving.
   Enjoy!