Brown Butter Black and White Baked Donuts.
Now that's a mouthful. Inspired by my travels to New York and my fascination with the iconic black and white cookie, I cooked up this recipe. It incorporates the nostalgic vanilla, lemon, almond flavours of the black and white cookie, with added depth of the brown butter and buttermilk. It's a labour of love, like all good things, and you do need a donut tin for this which is a little niche. But a fun little project if you fancy a challenge and some delicious, striking little donuts at the end of it. If anyone asks you to share, tell them forget about it!
Ingredients
For the donuts:
2.5 cups plain flour (435g)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 cup buttermilk or natural yoghurt (224g)
3/4 cup light brown sugar (150g)
1/4 cup unsalted butter (60g)
4 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 eggs
Zest of half a lemon
Pinch of salt
Glaze:
100g cream cheese
230g icing sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2-3 tbsp cocoa powder
Method
1. Preheat your oven to 190C/fan.
2. Mix the flour, bicarb, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
3. Place butter in a pan over a medium heat. Keep an eye on it, when it starts to go brown and smell nutty, take it off the heat.
4. In a separate large bowl, mix the buttermilk, brown sugar, browned butter, vegetable oil and extracts.
5. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well.
6. Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and gently fold in.
7. Scoop the batter into a piping bag and cut a small amount off of the tip of the bag (you can spoon it in if you don't have a piping bag).
8. Pipe the batter into the donut pan in a circle.
9. Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden brown and springy.
10. Make the glaze while the donuts are baking by mixing the cream cheese, icing sugar and lemon juice. Mixture should be thick but slightly runny, so add lemon juice gradually until you get the right consistency.
11. Once the donuts finish baking, set on a cooling rack to cool. Once cooled, you can begin icing.
12. Ice one half of each donut with the white icing by taking some icing on a palette knife and draping it over half the donut. Once all donuts have their half white side, stir in cocoa powder to your remaining glaze. Now ice the uncovered sides with the chocolate glaze. Enjoy!