24:01
That's a cake donut, no yeast, no machine. And it's this soft because there's a whole cup of mashed potato in it. Yes, you heard me right, potato. I'm Gemma Stafford, a professional chef from Ireland. Today I'm going to show you why the potato is doing all the work. The one number that decides whether you get golden or greasy, and how to get bakery donuts out of a pot on the stove. So what I love about this dough is that it's a cakey donut, so no yeast that we have to work with. And we're going to mix it all up by hand.
We don't even need a machine. Our first ingredient, the star of the show is mashed potato. Obviously I love mashed potato for my own personal reasons. The mashed potato you want to use here can be leftover mashed potato as long as it just has maybe some dairy, some milk, some butter and a little bit of salt. We don't want pepper in here. We don't want any like cheese or spices or anything like that. You kind of want just plain mashed potato.
You can also buy mashed potato in the store. You can also use dried mashed potato and make it up yourself. That also works well too. So the reason for mashed potato is because it has a profound effect on the crumb and the texture of the donut. But I'm not going to tell you exactly why until the very end so you can see it for yourself. For your mashed potato you want smooth, you want no lumps because those lumps will not work themselves out. So just a lovely smooth mashed potato. And you might want to soften it up a little bit before you start to make your dough. Into our mashed potato we are going to add in our eggs, whole eggs at room temperature.
Room temperature eggs because it combines into our batter much more easily. Then we have some sugar to go in here. Just regular white granulated sugar. Whole milk. The reason I like whole milk is because it has more fat and more fat means flavor. You can also use any kind of milk you like but I prefer to use whole milk. Some melted butter. People always ask me what kind of butter I use. I use Irish butter and I use salted, always salted because it has that little bit of extra flavor. And speaking of salt, some more salt.
These are our wet ingredients. We're going to whisk those together by hand. You want to mix this until it's nice and smooth. I think it's fair to say that everybody knows in Ireland we love our potatoes. We make potato bread, we make potato farls which is actually one of my most popular Irish recipes on BiggerBolderBaking.com. We have them with stews. We put them on top of Shepherd's pie. There's one thing I'll ever get tired of and that is mashed potato.
It's my absolute comfort food. There you go, lovely. And because there's no lumps in my mashed potato, which is one of my biggest pet peeves, one of my biggest, but it's definitely up there, then our mixture is nice and smooth. If you do have lumps, just pass it through a sieve and get rid of those lumps. Now, our dry ingredients. Here I have some plain flour, some baking powder, and a pinch of nutmeg. Nutmeg is one of those things that less is more, so you just want a little bit of warmth. Add to our donuts. Often people actually add nutmeg into their mashed potato, which is a choice.
Not what we do in Ireland. Okie dokie, just give those a mix together. And just a reminder that the baking powder is your raising agent, so we're not going to be waiting around having to work with yeast. That's what's going to give your donut that lovely rise. Then add our dry into our wet. And then just with your hand, not your hand, but like your spatula or your wooden spoon, bring the dough together. So just like any dough that you don't want to overwork, because these are cake donuts, consider them like cake and we definitely don't like to overmix cake when it has our flour in there. So just bring that dough together, hydrating the flour like so.
Look at that. There's a little bit of dry flour in there still, but that's ok. This is such a soft dough that it really needs to rest overnight. Not just for a few hours, but actually overnight. Overnight it develops more flavour, it makes it much easier to roll, and it also makes it much easier to fry. If you were to roll off the dough now, it would be too soft and it would fall apart in the frying pan. If you want to pop this into the fridge overnight, it can stay in the fridge for up to two days and then it would be ready to rock and roll. So while the dough is chilling, I thought I would answer a few hotline questions that
come from my website about these donuts. Can I use leftover mashed potato? Yes, you absolutely can, as long as it doesn't have garlic in it, doesn't have cheese, you know, pepper, salt, you know, butter, a little bit of milk is perfect. And that's kind of it. And yes, you can use instant mashed potatoes. That is totally fine. Same, again, no seasoning. Can I bake them? And that's a really great question because on BiggerBolderBaking.com I do have baked donuts. I wouldn't bake these because they'll end up being heavier and not as light. For best results, fry these donuts. Lastly, why were my donuts greasy?
This is a great question. Candy thermometer always helps with that just to make sure. Do your little test, add a little bit of dough in there, see if it cooks too fast, too slow. You're looking for around the 325 to 350 range. If it's too cool, oil will soak into your donuts and they'll get greasy. And that's what happens. So you want it like the perfect temperature. So as they say in the world of old cooking shows, here's one I prepared earlier. And obviously I did that because I needed it to be cold and ready to roll. Okay, there we go. We want to flour our surface for this one.
I don't know how I feel about flaring surfaces for shaping rolls and things like that. But this is not the same. Flour is our friend here because it is a sticky one. People often ask me what's my favorite kitchen tool? And it's not actually a kitchen tool at all. It's a ruler. For baking, you always need a ruler. I picked these up in the dollar store and they are so handy. So we're going to roll out our donut dough to around half an inch thick. And if you don't have a ruler, it's very hard to know that. And if you want to get the exact same donut that I did, same
thickness, same size, then it's important to follow the recipe. Okay, let's have a little look here. Oh, perfect. Half an inch. I would have ever worked in one kitchen that actually had a donut cutter. You do not need a donut cutter. You just need two different size holes. This is three inches. This is one and a half. So something that works that'll give you that. Three inches is the biggest you want this one.
Otherwise you're going to end up with huge donuts. Give it a cut out and then cut out the middle. Instant donut. Look at that. We're going to keep our hole, keep our donut. Lovely. And then straight onto the tray, I would suggest working with this dough quite swiftly so it stays nice and cold. And if you feel at any point while you're heating up your oil, if it gets a bit warm, pop them into the fridge because it will benefit from being in the fridge. So we'll hold its shape. So I love donuts. But the thing about donuts, especially with the yeasted ones, is that there's not enough eating in them, like they're so soft and fluffy.
They just disappear in your mouth. So my preference for a donut is actually a cake donut because it's like eating fried cake is like there's so much to eat and you can kind of have different flavored doughs. Like I really love a cake donut. There's a place here in LA called Sidecar Donuts that I used to be near in Santa Monica, which makes the most amazing cake donuts. If you stick around after this video, you'll see me making more donuts and fried treats. When the dough is lovely and cold, you can see that it keeps the donut shape. Because this is a kind of a cakey dough and not a yeasted dough, you can reroll your scraps, go gently on it.
Sometimes I just kind of fold them over and pat them down and then just cut out a few more. Sometimes that very last donut ends up being a little bit tough. Okay, great. So straight away after cutting these donuts, they're ready to be fried off. So follow me over to my fry station. Okay, so time to fry. When it comes to frying, please be very careful. If you need assistance, make sure you ask for it.
I don't always use a thermometer when it comes to frying, but for best results, it does ensure that you have the right temperature of oil. What we're going for is around 325. And mine is a little bit hot right now. So to take down that temperature and actually test it, fry off a little bit of dough, sacrifice some of those little holes. If they cook too quickly or dough is too hot, they take too long. It's not hot enough. What you want is this lovely little simmer around here. You see the way it's forming those little balls around the dough.
This is perfect. So the temperature you're looking for is around 325 degrees. If it's too hot, turn it down and wait for it to reach the temperature. And just note, when you put your donuts into the pan, the temperature will naturally lower. So just factor that in also so your donuts don't sit there and kind of stew. Okay, my oil test. Those look pretty good. Those are for the chef. I eat me. Now let's place in our donuts. Gently place them in. You can also use your spider. A spider is a great tool when making donuts to gently lay stuff into hot oil.
Put them in away from yourself. So you're not splashing yourself. And one very important tip about frying also is don't overload the pan. Like I said, the temperature will really drop and it just makes it harder for everything to fry beautifully. So in a pan this size, around three to four donuts is enough. Definitely no more than four. They will simmer away beautifully, as you can see. And they're going to take around two to three minutes on each side.
Feel free to move them a little bit after around the three minute mark when they're lovely golden brown, flip them over and let them cook on the other side. The one thing when frying is never walk away from your pan. Always be here to monitor. Lovely. I learned a rule in kitchens when I spent many years there in my 20s, which is the only thing that should boil is water. So if you're doing something like frying, your oil should not be boiling. It should be simmering, which means it's controlled. And this is all about control. A gentle simmer, a nice amount of bubbles.
Your donut is not sinking or soaking in oil. This looks great. Now, I want you to look at this. You see those lovely crackles on top? That's what you get from a cake donut. And our raising agent gave us that. Beautiful. These are looking fantastic and look how big they are. They were cut half an inch thick, but they really puffed up. When you're taking out your donuts, make sure just to let any excess oil drip off. Put it over on your baking rack that has a tray underneath so the excess can just drip away. Anytime you're frying anything, you always want to make sure that your station is set up in advance just to make sure that the process moves swiftly and you're safe.
Just like that. These look fantastic. And I just continue cooking off the rest of your donuts. These look beautiful. The very last step is to dip them in some cinnamon sugar. And for best results, you want to do that when they're hot from the fryer. So follow me. When the donuts are hot, the cinnamon sugar almost creates a crust on the outside. If they're cold, it'll just fall right off. So time is of the essence here. It'll make all the difference. A little baker secret. I like to add a tiny bit of salt into my cinnamon sugar just for that extra bite and flavor.
Once your donuts are dipped in the cinnamon sugar, you can really see that iconic cake donut look. They're incredibly crisp on the outside, moist in the center and have a lovely warm cinnamon sugar finish. So why did I use potato? Simply, it's a starch. Potato starch holds on the water in a way flour never can. So the crumb stays soft long after an ordinary cake donut has gone dry. You do not taste the potato. You just reap the benefits of a very soft donut. Thank you so much for watching. I'm going to be back here next week, same time, same place for more Bigger Bolder Baking. And if you cannot wait until
then, then get comfy and check out my hundreds of videos. I'll see you really soon.
