baked doughnuts

Yummy note: In honor of Fat Tuesday, also known now as Packzi day to me, I've decided to post about the closest thing to it... doughnuts! I first learned about this Packzi day about 10 years ago at my first job in Chicagoland where my boss brought us in a couple dozen of these gems from a local bakery. And who knew this was how you pronounce it...  Anyhow, it has become a new favorite food day for me. Recently a friend picked me up some Wilton doughnut pans and I whipped up a batch of little baked doughnuts. If you are not about the baked variety of doughnuts, and want to go straight to the deep-fried goodness, check out my other family favorite with this fried donut recipe.

Baked Doughnuts

Original recipe from the Wilton Doughnut Pan packaging below

Ingredients:

2 cups cake flour, sifted

3/4 cup white sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp salt

3/4 cup buttermilk (I substituted this with Greek yogurt)

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 tbsp butter, melted

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray doughnut pan with nonstick cooking spray. In a large bowl, sift together cake flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt. Add in eggs, butter, and yogurt. Mix until just combined. Pour into doughnut pans, roughly filling each doughnut cavity about 2/3 full. An easy tip to transferring the dough into the pan is to place the dough into a plastic bag or decorating bag and pipe into your pans.

Bake doughnuts for about 7-9 minutes or until the top of the doughnuts start to brown a bit and spring back when they are touched. Let cool in pan for about 4-5 minutes and remove. Finish doughnuts with your choice of toppings or fillings.

Chocolate Glaze:
1/4 cup chocolate chips
1 tbsp corn syrup
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp water


Directions: 
Melt chocolate chips, butter, and corn syrup for about a minute or until completely melted. Stir in a tablespoon on the hot water until the glaze becomes smooth. Add more water if consistency is not to your liking. Dip doughnuts immediately and let the chocolate glaze set.


OR

Vanilla Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
couple tbsp water or milk
splash of vanilla extract

Directions:
Put powdered sugar in a bowl and add gradually your choice of either water or milk and stir. Just a few teaspoons or perhaps a tablespoon might be enough. Add in a splash of vanilla extract for added flavor at the end when you reach your consistency of the vanilla glaze. Frost doughnuts as desired.

Add your finishing touches at the end before the glaze sets up. Sprinkles, colored sugar, or even plain powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar works well. Be creative!

Aren't they just cute?! I love them.. just so much bite-sized goodness.

And in honor of Packzi Day, here's a few filled with some strawberry jelly and one with some vanilla pudding. (I just used one of the kids vanilla pudding cups from the refrigerator and it worked great!)

Ode to my Packzi, the filled donuts of Fat Tuesday...

These were my treat of the day from one of my favorite local bakeries, Deerfields.