Last night I attended a donut class at BAKE!. It was called “We Dig Donuts” and we were going to make the yeast-raised kind, like Krispy Kreme and Dunkin. There were 8 students in the class, including a few hardcore BAKE! students. Our instructor Alejandro gave us an overview of donut history and some tips on getting the right ingredients. After the short lecture and a demonstration of the recipe, it was our turn to make it ourselves.

I had no idea making donuts would take so long! We prepared our dough consisting of flour, sugar, butter (yes, butter not shortening), salt, egg, milk and yeast. We kneaded the dough to develop the gluten to hold shapes. Then we let it sit and rise until it doubled in size, around 2 hours. Alejandro gave us some dough the BAKE! staff prepared earlier to work with so we wouldn’t have to wait for ours to rise. We rolled them out to about 1/2-inch thick and started cutting out donut shapes. The leftover scraps were mushed together to make a couple lumpy fritter-like donuts. The shapes were laid out on trays and left to proof for another 45 minutes. Then finally, we could fry them! Frying actually takes just 45 seconds. It was insanely quick.

While some of us were frying, Alejandro showed the class how to make filling and glaze. He made a vanilla bean pastry cream filling, a chocolate ganache and sugar glaze. Then we all set up our trays of fried donuts at the filling and glazing station and went nuts.

I made 6 sugar glazed donuts, 6 chocolate dipped donuts, 6 cream filled donuts with chocolate frosting, 3 lumpy donuts with sugar glaze, and 2 dozen donut holes rolled in either powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar. There were more but an unknown amount of fresh warm donuts went straight into my tummy, of course. Plus, we also got to take home the dough we set aside to rise. More donuts to be made this weekend!

This morning I rewarmed the donuts for around 10 minutes in a 275 degree oven (Alejandro recommended 325 degrees, but since mine were already filled and glazed, I didn’t want to make it too hot). They became soft and fluffy and yummy! I brought them to work and everyone enjoyed them.