No Fry Baked Jelly-filled Donut

Donut with red bean paste filling and sugared matcha topping

I had my first donut in years while on a day trip to Johor recently. Although I am not a donut eater because of the calories lurking behind those  sugary lovelies, I finally succumbed to the multi-colored seductive looking mini donuts in a café and have been thinking about them ever since.

Thus I started the long search for the recipe of a non fried donut. Can any delicious donut ever be made from baking, not frying ? My search ended at http://souvlakiforthesoul.com , whose tiny jam filled baked donuts caught my attention.

This is one of the best moments in my baking life where the first attempt is such an overwhelming success - the 3 of us gobbled down 4 all in the name of food testing. Light and fluffy is not the usual description of donuts but that is how my daughter describes it. Now from 16 baked donuts, down to 12 in 15 minutes, it looks like it won't be  long before I embark on another batch again.

Makes about 16 small donuts. Adapted from  http://souvlakiforthesoul.com.

Donut with desiccated coconut topping and kaya filling

Dry ingredients :

330 g plain flour

70 g soft brown sugar

4 g dried instant yeast

Wet ingredients :

120 g warm milk

40 ml sour cream

2 small eggs, room temp

70 g melted butter

Filling :

Quince jelly

Pictorial summary. I overdid the color dot which expanded upon baking !

Mix dry ingredients well. Set  aside.

Using an electric whisk, beat all wet ingredients until well incorporated. Add spoonfuls of flour into wet mix, whisking at low speed.

When mixture gets thick, change whisk  to dough hook and continue mixing until all the dry ingredients are added to the wet ingredients.

Continue whisking for 10 minutes.

Cover and let rise, 1.5 hours

Preheat oven.

On floured worktop, pour risen dough, knock down  and roll flat.

Use a small cup and another slightly bigger one to cut out the bottom disc and top disc of the donut respectively.

Spoon 1 tsp of jelly ( I had an assortment of fillings : kaya, red bean paste, quince jam ) on the smaller bottom disc.

Wet edges with milk.

Complete donut by placing the bigger disc  over the smaller disc.

Seal edges.

If there is more than 1 type of filling, mark ingredients with 1 spot of colored dye.

Let rise another 1 hour.

Preheat oven to  200 C

Bake for 11 minutes, until donut is brown.

Dip top of donut with  melted butter.

Sprinkle sugar or any topping ( cocoa powder, desiccated coconut, matcha powder etc ). I matched red bean paste filling with matcha-powdered-sugar for topping, quince filling with lavender-scented sugar and kaya filling with  desiccated-coconut-powdered sugar as topping.