Who needs Krispy Kreme when you can make these at home? Disclaimer: moncheoPR is not liable for any computer damage resulting from droolage.
Brown Butter Vanilla Donuts
Ingredient list? Nah. How about an ingredient picture instead. The little green package in front of the sugar is yeast (levadura). The brown bean-looking thing is a Tahitian Vanilla Bean. THE best Vanilla in the WORLD! You also need oil for frying. Only ingredient missing was the Kosher Salt. It was still hiding in the cupboard.
We
started by putting the butter to brown over medium heat. Why are
we browning the butter? When you "brown" (as a verb) butter you're browning
the milk solids in the butter. As these cook and become brown, their nutty
flavors are emphasized. It is referred to as beurre noisette in French. Remember, brown butter taste deliciously
divine, but can burn real quick. So pay attention to the nutty smells and colors and remove in time taking into consideration carry-over heat. 
While the butter browned, we cracked some eggs into a bowl.
Next we scraped out the vanilla bean (below left) and added it to the browned butter. The heat from the butter will get the vanilla bean oils working and start perfuming the butter.
Working with a vanilla bean: cut it lengthwise, then use the knife and scrape out the little, tiny pieces of vanilla goodness from the inside. Do NOT throw out the bean. You can use it for steeping in the dairy for a custard (flan, creme brulee, panna cotta - this last one is not technically a custard but that's a whole other post) or put it in your sugar jar/bowl/container (below right). It will perfume your sugar with vanilla and will go delicious with coffee, cereal, cremita or whatever else you use sugar in. You can even blend it with sugar until it looks like a salt & pepper mix (black and white) and use the same way as regular sugar.
They ARE expensive. But if you can get your hands on fresh ones, you only need a bit for each thing you do; unless you're doing bulk production where you need the entire bean or more. Or unless you're us and your crazy self wants to use a whole bean on a single batch of donuts! The investment always bear fruit in that the flavors are AWESOME.
Next we added sugar to the egg yolks and whisked for a bit to mix it well.
After that we prepared the flour and yeast. This time we were using Instant Yeast, which does not have to be re-hydrated before use, like with Active Yeast. We have yet to see any fresh yeast at the store, so we managed to find a package of this instant one in our kitchen and went with that. Check the dates on the little packages, they might be expired and you will not get any leavening out of it. There are basically 3 types of yeast and you can learn more about them on this site.
Once the butter browned to our liking, we were ready to add it to the egg and sugar mixture. BUT, because our butter was pretty hot, the recipe asked to add a bit of the flour to the egg/sugar mix before adding the brown butter. This would help TEMPER the cold egg/sugar/flour mix with the hot butter/vanilla mix. When tempering egg-based recipes, we're bringing two items of opposing temperatures to a happy medium. Therefore, the hot butter won't cook the eggs and result in really sweet scrambled eggs. Once can also temper chocolate, but that is a different procedure entirely.
We sprinkled a handful of flour into the eggs, whisked, and added the browned butter as we continued whisking. You can see the decadent pieces of browned milk solids, as well as the vanilla bean specks throughout the egg mixture.
Now came the time to get our hands dirty - meter las manos en la masa - add the flour and start making a dough! Lacking the mixer this afternoon, we beat and mixed the dough with a spatula until we could barely breathe. Once a nice ball was formed, we removed the ball from the bowl. Washed, cleaned, and oiled the bowl and placed the ball inside to rest (covered) and rise for an hour and a half. It would hopefully double in size assuming the yeast did its job.
When we returned we punched it down (literally punch the dough ball down to flatten it and release the trapped gas), rolled it up again, and let it rise another half hour. While we waited for it to re-rise, we made the glaze. It was basically a little bit of milk, vanilla bean, lemon juice, and powdered sugar. We put it over the heat to warm (optional) and left it to cool down a bit before we would use it. We also prepared the oil for frying and the pans and racks for resting the donuts after frying and glazing. Mise en place people! Have your stuff ready and your cooking will be a success!!!
We placed flour on the counter and placed the dough on the floured counter to roll it out. FINALLY!!! We were ready to roll out the dough and make some DONAS! This is the fun part. We tried circles, donut holes, squares, and twists. You name it, it can become a donut! The twists didn't work out so well, but honestly, who cares when they taste divine?
And the rest, as they say, is history. We shall stop writing and let you enjoy the visual food porn to follow. Don't forget to read our final thoughts on the results and to click on the link to check out the entire set of pictures from this moncheoPR Test Kitchen entry.
Results: We loved this recipe, but want to work on it some more. The dough by itself tasted good, but with a noticeable "egginess," like that of pate a choux. Next time we are considering using less whole eggs. Maybe 4 whole eggs and two yolks? Or 3 whole and 3 yolks? We're also interested in trying Active yeast (the kind you have to soak before use), or if we're lucky, we'll find some fresh yeast and go with that!
The brown butter, vanilla, sweetness, glaze, etc. all resulted in excellent flavors, aromas, and sweetness. Visually, you can see the specks of brown butter and vanilla bean through the dough surface and on the inside. It was delicious! But we're sure we can even make it more delicious by playing around with it. So that is what we shall do. ¡Buen provecho!
Comments