Saturday, March 10, 2012

Spiced Pink Lady Apple Baked Doughnuts

The best kind of apple is a Pink Lady apple. They're reddish-pinkish-yellow-and-green. They are really sweet and really sour. Sometimes, they're hard to find, and I'll have a Fuji or a Honeycrisp instead, but I always come back to my favorite. The other day it dawned on me that out of all the baking I do with apples, I never bake with the Pink Lady variety. These apple doughnuts have plenty of warm spices and apple flavor due to the grated apples, apple sauce, apple butter, and a hint of apple cider vinegar. (If you don't have a doughnut pan handy, I think the recipe could be tried out with muffins, no problem.)

Spiced Pink Lady Apple Baked Doughnuts
(Makes about 8 full-size doughnuts)

Wet ingredients:
2 Pink Lady apples (about 1 1/2 cups peeled and shredded apple)
1/2 cup applesauce
2 tablespoons apple butter
1/4 cup canola oil
1 egg (beaten)
2 tablespoons sorghum
1/2 cup light brown sugar
juice from 1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Dry ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon clove
1 tablespoon butter (melted)

To coat warm doughnuts:
3 tablespoons melted olive oil margarine
3 tablespoons cane sugar
1 tablespoon pure maple flakes (crushed)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of sea salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Pulse the shredded apple in the food processor a few times in order to break up any long strips, but don't make it apple sauce. Mix it with apple sauce, apple butter, canola oil, egg, sorghum, light brown sugar, lemon juice, and apple cider vinegar. Set aside.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, sea salt, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and clove. Gently fold in the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients; be sure not to over-mix; stop mixing when you can barely see the flour in the mixture. Use a silicone brush to lightly coat the doughnut pan with melted butter. Spoon in the batter and bake for about 15-20 minutes until the tops of doughnuts are golden brown. While they're baking, make the coating mixture. Melt the margarine and set aside. In another bowl, mix cane sugar, crushed maple flakes, cinnamon, and sea salt and set aside.

Take them out and let them cool for a few minutes before loosening the edges of doughnuts with a non-metal implement like a plastic lettuce knife so you don't scratch the pan. Place them on a wire rack and brush them with melted butter before you spoon the dry coating mixture over them in a deep bowl or put some of the coating mixture into a bowl and swirl it around with the doughnut and press doughnut into it.

1 comment:

  1. Just made these for breakfast, as muffins. the recipe made 12 full size and 20 mini muffins. I dipped the tops in the melted butter and the sugar coating.

    The were great, very essence of apple-y. The recipe went well, only two suggestions. If you combine all the wet ingredients at once the apple butter wants to stay in clumps. it would probably blend better if it was melted, or if it was whisked with the oil first or something like that. Second, sorghum is really nonexistent in my region. I'm an obsessive geek and do have some(thanks to Crescent Dragonwagon. Her books are the only place before this I've heard sorghum mentioned), but most people I know wouldn't have ever heard of it(I think maybe it's more of a southern thing?) Anyways, you might want to suggest a substitution for that.

    As for the muffin adaptation, they worked out well. At 375, it took 27 minutes for the full size muffins, and 13 for the minis. they did definitely need to cool a little before being eaten. the one I ate straight out of the oven was a bit gummy because it was too hot, but a few minutes later they were great.

    ReplyDelete