Food For Friends | baked cinnamon doughnut holes

Bringing you a little sugary delight this Monday.

We've certainly earned it. I don't know what it's like where you live, but here in Cambridge it's well and truly reverted back to winter. Snow. Freezing temperatures. Brrr.

So what else is there to do but roll your sleeves up and bake up some cinnamon doughnut holes? And then eat them. By the ton.

(how sweet are these cheery little strawberries on the tea towel?)

There's obviously a soft spot in my heart for the baked doughnut-cinnamon combination (you can find a slightly different recipe for baked sugar doughnuts here). But they really taste like doughnuts. All dense and cakey. And in this recipe a cinnamon-butter topping gets baked directly into the doughnuts. Delicious.

And also welcome to the rebranded food category - Food For Friends. Much more inviting than the old Mmm posts, don't you think? 

Happy Monday!

Baked Cinnamon Doughnut Holes

Makes about 24 small doughnut holes

Adapted from Top with Cinnamon

For the doughnut holes

8 tbsp (3oz / 85g) butter
2 tsp cinnamon
6 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tsp milk
1 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups (7 oz / 195g) all purpose flour
1/2 cup (4 oz / 110g) granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
1 egg
1/2 cup (125 ml) milk

For the glaze:

2 tbsp milk
1/4 cup (1 oz / 28g) powdered (or icing) sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C), grease a mini muffin pan well.

2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, pour 1/4 cup (4 tbsp) into a jug and set it aside.

3. To the saucepan (containing the remaining 4 tbsp of butter), add the cinnamon, dark brown sugar, milk, cornstarch and vanilla extract. Carefully heat the mixture until it bubbles and remove from the heat.

4.  Pour the mixture into the bottom of each cavity of the mini muffin pan. You want the mixture to fill about 1/4 of the bottom of each mini muffin hole.

5. In the jug with the butter, add the egg and milk and whisk together.

6. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, salt and grated nutmeg. Pour in the contents of the jug and stir together until just combined. Don't worry the mixture may look slightly lumpy. You're doing great! 

7. Spoon the batter into the doughnut pan, filling each cavity about 2/3 full.

8. Bake in an oven for 8 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of one of the doughnut holes comes out clean. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.

9. Mix the glaze ingredients together until you get a dripping consistency (thicker than cream, but not as thick as yogurt). You may need to adjust the sugar and milk quantitates to get this spot on. Dribble the glaze from a height to get a zigzag effect. Or dip them straight in to get an even glaze.

10. Devour. Or share with friends. It's your call.