Evening all!
I hope you all took my advice on Wednesday and have been enjoying the weather? I’ll be the first to admit I’m not very good in the heat but on an evening like this there is no excuse not to eat al fresco, or have a pint of something yummy and relax outside until the stars rise.
We’ve had another busy weekend, but a weekend busy making the most of the sunshine. On Saturday we spent most of the day at a local park (Fairlands Valley Lakes in Stevenage) with friends. We had a delicious picnic with fresh home-made salads, naughty treats from the delicatessen and iced tea. We also played a game or two of Frisbee as well as bananagrams! To top it off I had an ice-cream – absolute bliss!
Today we’ve been upcycling an old hat stand. It belongs to Mr KG’s parents when they got married and moved in together (30+years ago?) As you can imagine it was a bit dated (pine – eugh!) so we’ve sanded it down, given it an undercoat of primer and managed to get a first coat of white paint on too. Next week we hope it will be sunny again and we can finish off a second white coat before I get to decorate it. That’s right…decorate. When we finally move out our bedroom is going to be Japanese inspired mainly with plum, purple and pink-y tones. We’ve got bedding and a few nik-naks already but for a bit of extra interest in the room we’re having a decorated hat stand. I’ll be painting purple, pink and blue cherry blossoms on it and I can’t wait to see how it turns out! I promise I’ll share a picture…
I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting recently and this recipe was the product of one. Fortunately I made such a large quantity of the mix that I could improve my technique with each batch that I actually baked.
It all came about after a rather depressing day spent suit shopping last weekend. To cheer myself up my Mum took me to Lakeland to treat myself to something cooking-related and I found the most adorable purple silicone mini-doughnut mould. I had to have it!
Much like with the design of my hat stand, I had in my head what I wanted the finished result to look like but getting it to that stage was a bit of a problem. I also knew what I wanted them to taste like and the kind of texture I was after so I spent a lot of time adding a bit of this and then adding a bit more to the batter, tasting as I went along.
I was really please with how they turned out! The texture of the doughnut is firm and cakey but not crumbly. They have a good strong taste of vanilla which makes them extremely moreish and let’s admit. They look seriously cute!
You don’t know how happy I was when lovely Kerry from Kerry Cooks pointed out that they looked like Homer Simpsons favourite doughnuts from The Simpsons – that was the look I was going for!!!!
This mix will make somewhere between 24 and 30 mini-doughnuts and as moreish as they are you probably won’t want to eat ALL of them to yourself. My Mum half to her end of term book club and they went in minutes!
They’re great for gatherings like that, or afternoon tea even! Why not get rid of boring old biscuits and serve one of these with a cuppa instead? Your options are endless!
Here’s how to make them…
Ingredients
Vanilla Mini Doughnuts
- Ingredients:
- 150g self-raising flour
- 120g caster sugar
- 2 tsp vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- 100ml milk
- 1 tsp good quality vanilla paste
- 100g icing sugar
- Pink food colour gel
- Hundreds and thousands/sprinkles
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to Gas mark 3 and using an oil spray lightly mist the silicone mould with vegetable oil.
- Sift the flour into a large bowl and place to one side. In a measuring jug mix your milk, egg, oil and vanilla paste.
- Whisk by hand until well combined and light and frothy.
- Make a well in the middle of the flour and slowly pour in the wet ingredients.
- With a wooden spoon or spatula, beat the wet and dry ingredients together. You want a thick sticky but smooth batter at the end.
- Beat vigorously to make sure there are no lumps.
- Fill the doughnut moulds roughly ¾ full with the batter. This can most easily be done with the assistance of a piping bag!
- Place in the centre of the oven and bake for 10-12 mins until they are springy to the touch.
- Pop out of the mould and leave to cool before icing.
- To ice: mix together the icing sugar with 1 tbsp of water making glace icing. You want it thick enough to hold its shape but runny enough to drizzle.
- Finally thoroughly mix in the food colouring.
- Drizzle over the doughnuts and immediately decorate with the sprinkles.
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