Well, its that time again - time to post up the October 2010 Daring Bakers Challenge! And a challenge it was. The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious. It was my first time deep frying anything and I was so happy to have my good friend D there to help. It was nice to have two sets of hands as there was a lot of multi-tasking involved!
I chose to make two kinds of doughnuts - pumpkin cake doughnuts and a yeasted doughnut recipe called bombolini. The bombolini were filled with either lemon curd or raspberry jelly (both courtesy of D). Both types of doughnut were absolutely delicious and were devoured eagerly by hubby's friends who were at our place for games night while all this craziness was going on!
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
I'm not going to repeat the recipes here as I did not do anything significantly different from the original recipe and it would make for an awfully long post! So, you can find the pumpkin doughnut recipe here and the bombolini recipe here. This post will mainly be about photos! We got some great photos and these recipes literally made loads of doughnuts. I would highly recommend both recipes and the cinnamon sugar that the pumpkin doughnuts are rolled in is absolutely magical!
I've always been afraid of deep frying - mainly out of the fear of being burnt by the hot oil splashing up at me. But I feel like I really conquerred that fear during this challenge! The one thing I found very challenging was the temperature fluctuations... not sure if it is because I have a gas range or what, but I was adjusting the temperature of the burner every few minutes to maintain the recommended deep frying temperature. Any tips from you experienced deep fryers out there or do most of you have the same problem? Either way, we didn't have any doughnut disasters - they all turned out beautifully and D & I made a great team. I deep fried the doughnuts while she tossed the hot doughnuts in the cinnamon sugar mixture. We definitely had an assembly line going!
.JPG)
I hope you enjoy the photos of our adventure! D is joining the DBs for the November challenge and is really excited. Thanks for stopping by my blog to check it out and thank you to Lori for such a fantastic challenge! I'm already looking forward to next month's challenge!
Happy Baking my Friends!
Yum, yum, YUM. Those donuts look fantastic. Your husband and his friends are so lucky, and I have a feeling that they'll be wanting to have games night at your house a little more often... :) Great job on the challenge.
ReplyDeleteWell I'm impressed this all your efforts and it is always nice to have a friend helping and the others for the game night must of been in heaven with all those doughnuts. Wonderful work on this challenge. Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.
ReplyDeleteYour doughnuts looks so yummy.....filled with lemon curd wow! I need to make some for myself pronto. Thanks for stopping by my blog.
ReplyDeleteThey look really excellent and I love the colour of the pumpkin doughnuts. It seems that a lot of people had success with this recipe!
ReplyDeleteWow! What a great job! Your doughnuts look fabulous. It must have been so much fun!
ReplyDeleteThank you all for your kind words! It was definitely a lot of fun. :)
ReplyDeleteThey look delicious!
ReplyDeleteGreat Job!
Great job, Erin. I didn't try the pumpkin ones but I'm definitely going to as yours look fabulously tasty! I used a small deep fryer which I think was a whole lot easier, as it keeps the temperature steady for you. It meant I could only do two donuts at a time, but worth it for the convenience, I think.
ReplyDeleteSo many doughnuts! They all look awesome! Congrats on conquering your fear of deep-frying - I'm the same way, it makes me nervous. Bravo!
ReplyDeleteYour doughnuts look fantastic! It must have been great having a friend to help! I use my medium size gas burner and that seemed to be the right temperature. I also use a thermometer to keep the temp in check. I do think if you did a lot of deep frying investing in a deep fryer would be the best idea.
ReplyDeleteThank you all for your sweet comments! :) I love the daring bakers!! :D
ReplyDeleteHoly moly, look at all those doughnuts! They are crazy delicious looking! You look like you had an amazing time, loved this post!
ReplyDeleteLove your pics. They really helped show how it's done and they looked like you were having so much fun! Doughnuts look so perfect, too!
ReplyDelete