Custard Doughnuts
Custard doughnut. So simple, but so impressive. Although this vegan custard doughnut recipe requires a dollop of patience, it’s well worth it. We’ve made a super easy recipe that doesn’t require any fiddly equipment and is easy to jazz up in any way your sweet tooth so desires…
The Great British Bake Off is back and in week seven the bakers were tasked with creating 80’s bakes such as cream-filled doughnuts. Although the Bake Off rarely focuses on vegan bakes, many of us enjoy watching the show to find inspiration for our own vegan bakes as we attempt to try to recreate them using a vegan recipe.
This year, OGGS will be recreating one of the bakes from each episode so you can have a go at creating your own vegan-friendly version at home like these stunning vegan custard doughnuts.
Total Time: 2 hours 35 minutes
Prep Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Cook Time: 4 minutes
Servings: 12
Rating:
Total Time: 2 hours 35 minutes
Servings: 12
Ingredients
Method
Ingredients
(Servings: 12)
- 5 5 ml warm water
- 4.1666666666667 4.1666666666667 ml OGGS® Aquafaba
- 0.83333333333333 0.83333333333333 g dried active yeast
- 25 25 g plain flour, sifted, plus extra for kneading
- 4.1666666666667 4.1666666666667 g caster sugar
- 1.6666666666667 1.6666666666667 g margarine, melted and cooled
- Pinch of salt
- 7.5 7.5 ml dairy-free milk
- 0.083333333333333 0.083333333333333 tsp vanilla extract
- 41.666666666667 41.666666666667 ml sunflower oil, for deep-frying, plus extra for greasing
- 20.833333333333 20.833333333333 ml your favourite plant-based custard – we love Oatly!
- 8.3333333333333 8.3333333333333 g caster sugar
- 0.083333333333333 0.083333333333333 tsp ground cinnamon
Method
- Pour the water and Aquafaba into a large bowl, then sprinkle over the yeast. Leave for 5 minutes to activate. There’s no need to whisk it – hallelujah!
- Add the remaining doughnut ingredients: flour, sugar, melted margarine, salt, milk and vanilla extract. Using your hands, mix everything together until it starts to form a dough then knead well for about 5 minutes until it becomes smooth and pulls away from the sides of the bowl and has formed a ball.
- Sprinkle a clean work surface with a little flour, then continue kneading the ball until the dough appears stretchy. This should take 5 minutes. If you have a freestanding mixer, use that, fitted with a dough hook.
- Pop the dough back into a bowl, cover with a damp cloth and place in a warm part of your kitchen to prove for 1 hour. We like to do this in an oven, with the light turned on, but no heat.
- After an hour, the dough should have doubled in size, so knock out the air when it’s still in the bowl, divide it into 12 small pieces and roll each into a ball, weighing roughly 50g. Put them onto a lightly oiled baking sheet and leave to prove for another hour in your chosen warm space. They need to be well spaced out as they’ll continue to puff up.
- Around 10 minutes before your dough has finished proving, line a large baking tray with a couple of pieces of kitchen roll. Start heating the oil in a deep saucepan over a medium heat until it’s beginning to simmer. You should aim for 175°C if you have a cooking thermometer, but if you don’t have one, wait until you start seeing bubbles simmering on the sides and do a tester. Nip a small piece of dough from one of the balls and carefully drop it into the oil. The dough should sizzle, not burn, and float to the top if the oil is hot enough!
- Using a slotted spoon, lower each doughnut into the hot oil. They will grow in size so don’t panic if they look a little small when they go in. Flip over after about 1–2 minutes, once they are golden brown, and let the other half cook.
- Take them out with the same slotted spoon and place directly onto kitchen roll to mop up any excess oil.
- While they’re still warm, make a hole into the centre of the doughnut – we like to do this with a chopstick! Transfer the custard into a piping bag and snip a corner off. Place the nozzle end of the piping bag into the doughnut and give a good squeeze. Once they’re full, they will start spilling out the side…but that’s a good sign!
- Transfer the caster sugar and cinnamon into a shallow bowl/plate and roll each warm doughnut in it, ’til it’s well coated.
Top tips
- Doughnuts taste best the day they’re made…eat them quickly!
