Sunday Kitchen - Doughnuts with a twist of Orange and Cardamom

Sunday Kitchen - Doughnuts with a twist of Orange and Cardamom

I’m quite partial to a doughnut especially the light, fluffy, sweet and sticky Greek doughnuts known as Loukoumades.

This recipe is a take on a Loukoumades but without the sticky syrup coating, instead it has the somewhat traditional sugar/cinnamon coating with the added twist of orange and cardamom.

It is World Baking Day today so why not give them a go!

Doughnut Ingredients:

Makes 12

250grams plain flour

Pinch of salt

3 teaspoon of dried ready yeast

250ml warm water

Seeds from 1 cardamom crushed

Zest and juice from orange

(Vegetable oil for frying)

 Coating ingredients:

2 tablespoon of caster sugar

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of orange zest

Method:

Place all doughnut ingredients into a large bowl, reserving a teaspoon of orange zest for the coating mixture.

Mix through and cover with a tea towel or cling film, and leave to rest till it doubles in size (approx 1 hour).

Add sugar, cinnamon and orange zest in a bowl, mix through and set aside so the orange zest fully flavours the sugar.

Heat oil in a deep saucepan to about 360 degrees (you can test oil by adding a small amount of mixture into oil, if it puffs and rises immediately then it’s hot enough- another tip is using a wooden spoon by placing the tip of the handle into the hot oil, it is ready when the oil slightly bubbles around it).

The doughnut mixture will be gooey and sticky!

Using two tablespoons (one to scoop mixture and the other to scrape mixture off the spoon), scoop a tablespoon of the mixture and gently place in hot oil. The doughnuts should puff up and rise to the surface. Fry till golden brown on all sides.

Place on paper towel to absorb excess oil.

Coat the doughnuts with sugar, cinnamon and orange zest mixture. And eat!

It’s delicious with vanilla ice-cream and a drizzle of golden syrup. 

*Variation: Use lemon instead of orange- just as delicious!