the girl who ate doughnuts.

ay, that girl. again, with the food! she really will eat everything, i think, one day. earlier this month, miss robyn reported on national donut day, and i was a little surprised at the ones she preferred, which i had previously found lacking. but that is me, and i have never been fond of doughnuts, although i feel like i should as they are, in theory, a wonder of the modern world. shouldn't deep-fried dough equal sweet, fluffy light poofie cakes with a tiny bit of crispness and some sort of fatty richness? it should, but i rarely feel like it does. most doughnuts i've tried do not actually taste like anything and act like vehicles (reliant ks, not mini coopers) for fat or sugar--they are stodgy, there is very little subtlety, and frankly, very little flavour.

i have had a few excellent doughnuts before, so i knew it wasn't a lost cause. i prefer yeast doughnuts with some sort of filling or glaze over cake-type ones with flavours incorporated into the batter; since i was already working with brioche dough, i thought that this was the perfect opportunity to see if it would make as good a doughnut as i thought possible. however, i didn't think that the brioche recipes i had tried previously would work; the high butter content was a concern to me, as i thought maybe it would melt off too much in frying, or just burn up. so, the handy-dandy internets yielded this recipe that has a healthy amount of eggs and butter, which to me is an imperative.

i had a lovely cinnamon-scented honey; on brioche it became even moreso--the silky, earthy, slightly musty amber blended well with the equally sumptuous and rich bread. it was a natural match, so i decided to swap out the sugar in the doughnut recipe for honey. i didn't feel the need to compensate for the extra liquid that the honey would add as extra moisture in bread doughs doesn't have to hamper the final product as long as there is sufficient kneading. which, actually, is a LOT of kneading. i find brioche doughs to be somewhat difficult in that the eggs and butter can make it a sticky unwieldy mess; however, keep kneading and eventually it comes together in a beautifully golden-tinged elastic ball. yeast doughnut doughs, too, can be just as difficult to work as brioche, perhaps even more; at least with brioche i don't have to use a mixer to get a good dough (although it helps)--with a mixer, this doughnut dough took something like 30-45 minutes to get properly elastic, and smooth. that along with an overnight proofing time means it will take something like 11 to 12 hours to complete. despite these doughnuts not being something that can be knocked out on the spur of the moment, the work that must be done is pretty easy-going. yes, they are fun to make. also, i thought the final product was well worth the effort; dusted with cinnamon and vanilla-bean infused sugar, or glazed with apple cider and more of that cinnamon-scented honey, these doughnuts were golden brown, airy, light, not too sweet, and tender. truly delicious, and packing more flavour than the ones offered at your average donut hut.