And today we are making some yummy donuts.

And what you'll need is some plain or all purpose flour, salt, sugar, yeast this is

instant dried yeast that I am using. All the recipe quantities are on this weeks

blog post, there's a link in the description below.

2 eggs, milk, vanilla and some butter or margarine.

Melt your butter or margarine and then warm your milk, now it should feel the same temperature

as your finger, it shouldn't feel hot it shouldn't feel cold it should feel the same temperature.

In the bowl of your mixer with the dough hook attached add all of your wet ingredients,

followed by all of the dry ingredients. You do not need to pre-activate your yeast when

you're using instant yeast you can just add it straight into the mixture which makes it

easy.

Turn it on low speed to mix and it will form a sticky looking dough.

You want to leave the mixer running for about 5 minutes so it can just knead the dough through

and develop the gluten.

While it is kneading turn your oven on to very very low so it is barely even on. If

you have an oven thermometer then you can use that here. We want to make somewhere warm

for our donuts to rise nicely but we only want it to be 31-35 degrees c or that is 88-95F

this is where the yeast works the fastest so it will make the donuts rise the quickest.

Just so you know anything under 4C the yeast is dormant, nothing is happening. Under 22C

the growth is really slow so it will take a long time for the donuts to rise.

23-30 is OK And as I said the fastest yeast growth you'll

get is between 31-35C Anything above that it will be slowing down

and over 55 all your yeast is dead you've killed it so your donuts won't rise at all.

Take some of the dough out of the mixer and stretch it out thin enough so you are trying

to make a window that you can see the light through. While you are doing that if it is

breaking like this it is not ready, put it back in the mixer and knead it for longer.

4 minutes later try again and you can see how much more easily that is stretching out

now. So you should be able to stretch it thin like this so we can see light through it and

it is not breaking. That's perfect it's ready.

Grease a bowl and place the dough in it and cover it with a double layer of plastic wrap.

And place it somewhere warm to rise. If you live somewhere it is warm and your room is

that temperature then you don't need to use your oven. But today it is raining and cold

outside so we are using the oven to make it the right temperature.

While it is rising lets make the glaze. Melt the butter and mix in the icing or powdered

sugar and the cocoa powder. If you want it to be shiny you can also mix

in a little corn syrup or glucose syrup.

Then add a little hot water to thin it down. While it is warm it should be this thick consistency.

It is going to go thicker once it cools but we'll just warm it up again in the microwave

when we need it just before we dip our donuts.

For the vanilla glaze place some icing sugar in a bowl then add the water and the secret

ingredient the white marshmallows. Place that whole thing in the microwave for

30 seconds to melt those marshmallows. Stir it around and again if you want it shiny add

some glucose syrup. Just about a teaspoon will be plenty.

If you want cinnamon donuts mix together sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.

Now lets check our dough, that has doubled in size and risen nicely. Punch it down.

Then sprinkle some flour onto your work surface and tip out the dough. Give it a very gently

knead, you do not want to over work it at this stage. Roll it out to be about as thick

as your thumb.

Then take a donut cutter and dust it in flour then use it to cut out shapes. If you don't

have a donut cutter you can use two circle cutters, or you can just cut circles and forget

about the hole shape in the middle you don't have to have it.

Take the shapes and place them onto a sheet of baking paper, I have greased my baking

paper with a little oil just to make sure they don't stick here at all.

Now put them back into a warm place to rise. Now to cook our donuts we just need to fry

them in some oil, and we want to heat the oil up to 375F or 190C. When you have oil

heating on the stovetop don't walk away and leave it because it will keep getting hotter

and hotter. If you over heat your oil it will first get to smoking point and there will

be like this thick noxious smoke and then it will get to flash point which is where

it bursts into flames all on its own. If that does ever happen do not tip water

on it. To show you what would happen if you ddid we have a fireman at our house today.

We will use just a little cup of water, it is just plain tap water nothing else.

And try to put out the fire by tipping on the water onto it.

I felt that heat from behind the camera. Oh my goodness

If that was inside the house your kitchen would now be on fire.

And if you were standing right nest to the saucepan I would hate to think you would have

horrific burns.

Do not ever pour water on an oil fire, and do not try this at home.

To put out an oil fire what you should do is put on an oven glove and put the lid on

to starve it of oxygen. Then leave the lid on until it has cooled right down otherwise

it will just ignite agin when you open it up.

So to cook our donuts we want the oil to be 375F or 190C

Check your donuts have risen and place them in the oil (this is fresh oil obviously we

haven't used the one that has been on fire because it has a horrible taste to it.). Once

one side is cooked flip them over and you can see there they are just puffing up and

they are light and fluffy. Place them on some baking paper to drain.

Then while they are still warm dip in your cinnamon and sugar or

dip one side into your glaze just on the one side

If you want sprinkles add them on right away before they grey sets. I'm adding grated white

chocolate to some of mine you can get creative. Do the same with the vanilla glaze.

Then serve them up and they are light and fluffy inside.

Our fireman today takes 6 months leave without pay each year to go over to Indonesia with

his family and help people living in poverty. They are setting up surf retreats over there

to create an ongoing income for community development projects that they are running.

There is a very high child mortality rate and people are living on less than $1 a day.

You can help them out by either holidaying at mercy huts or by donating And I'll put

a link to their website below. Ad I'd love it if you could help them out.

Subscribe to How To Cook That for more cakes chocolates and desserts, click here for last

weeks video and here to go to the website for the donut recipe.

Have a great week and I'll see you on Friday. [musci the boat song by SetSailTv used with

permission]