Freshly made this week, our Head Chef Adam shared one of his favourite festive bakes with our very lucky resort team.
With the holidays fast approaching what better way to get into the festive spirit than making some delicious homemade doughnuts. These have been lovingly filled with a gingerbread creme patisserie. This recipe isn’t a quick but most of the time taken is for the dough to prove overnight without too much effort…
Doughnut Dough
- 500g flour
- 60g sugar
- 7g dried yeast
- 4 eggs
- 125g butter
- pinch of salt
This recipe is best if you start in the afternoon then you can allow for proving of the dough overnight in the fridge.
1. Start by adding all the ingredients besides the butter in a bowl with 150g of room temperature water. Mix by hand or with a kitchen aid until dough becomes smooth and uniform. Allow the dough to rest for a few minutes.
2. Add the butter bit by bit, allowing the butter to be incorporated before adding more, if doing this by hand it can be a bit messy and look like the butter won’t combine but be patient.
3. Place the dough into a clean bowl and cover with cling film until roughly doubled in size, give the dough a good kneed then place back into the bowl, cover and chill in the fridge overnight.
4. The next morning get your dough out of the fridge and divide into equal pieces (I usually like making them about 50g each) but you can make mini doughnuts just be aware the size of each doughnut will effect how long you need to cook them for.
5. Roll the doughs into tight ball and flatten slightly on a floured work surface, place them all onto a tray and allow them to prove for 3-4 hours depending on how warm you kitchen is, cover with a damp tea towel.
6. Once proved; heat up a pan of oil to 180 degrees and carefully lift 2-3 doughs into the pan, be vigilant with the temperature of your oil, too cold and they will absorb the oil, too hot and they will not cook fully on the inside.
7. Cook for 2 minutes on each side.
8. Remove the doughnuts and place on some kitchen roll for a few minutes, once the excess oil has been removed from the surface, roll the doughnut in some caster sugar and repeat the process until all the doughnuts are cooked.
9. Grab your piping bag out of the fridge and fill the doughnut with as much filling as they can take!
Gingerbread Biscuits
- 50g Butter
- 2 tbsp golden syrup
- 50g dark brown sugar
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 112g flour
1. Pre heat your oven to 180 degrees
2. Melt butter with golden syrup and sugar in a pan on a low heat until everything is incorporated, allow to cool as you weight and mix the other ingredients in a separate bowl. Once butter is cooled combine and mix thoroughly by hand
3. You can immediately roll out the dough mix onto some parchment paper as one big biscuit as it’s going to be used in the creme patisserie for flavouring. Or alternatively if you have some festive cutters you can make some fun festive biscuits which are great fun for children to decorate with some coloured icing
4. Bake in the oven for 10 – 12 minutes, once cooked they should be dark brown then allow to cool so they have a crunchy snap
The filling!
Creme patisserie
- 8 egg yolks
- 120g sugar
- 50g flour
- 4 tbsp cornflour
- 560g milk
1. In a saucepan add milk and 75g of your homemade gingerbread biscuits give 5 minutes to allow the gingerbread and milk to get to know each other, you can also buy some ready made biscuit if you’re not feeling so motivated.
2. Add all the other ingredients to the saucepan, mix well
3. Cook on a medium heat while vigorously stirring until thickened, (don’t worry you can’t really overcook this). Once thickened allow to cool on the side with clingfilm placed on the surface of the creme patisserie to avoid a skin forming.
4. Once cooled; place into a piping bag and chill in the fridge until you’re ready to use.
