Donut Recipes Archives (2024)

FAQs

What was the first donut ever made? ›

The history of the doughnut itself is generally traced to Dutch immigrants in 17th- and 18th-century New York, then New Netherland, who prepared fried dough balls called olie koeken or olykoeks, which means “oil cakes.” They were similar to modern doughnuts, although they did not yet have the iconic ring shape.

Dutch settlers brought olykoek ("oil(y) cake") to New York (or New Amsterdam) in the early 18th century. These doughnuts closely resembled later ones but did not yet have their current ring shape.

Captain Hanson Gregory (1832-1921) created the donut as a teen while trying to feed a crew of sailors — and changed American culinary culture forever. Americans have a "hole" lotta love for the donut. Credit Maine mariner Captain Hanson Crockett Gregory for that.

Primary ingredients in an old-fashioned doughnut include flour, sugar, eggs, sour cream or buttermilk, and leavening agents such as baking powder or baking soda. Additional ingredients may include milk, butter, vanilla extract and salt. Some recipes use vegetable shortening.

The priciest doughnut on the planet is filled with champagne and topped with 24-karat gold. It's called the Golden Cristal Ube, and a dozen will set you back $1,200.

Jelly Doughnut

These classic doughnuts are typically round without a hole in the middle, and generally leavened with yeast. The center is stuffed with jelly, jam, or preserves (and sometimes chocolate!), giving you a burst of flavor with each bite.

Cake doughnuts, lacking that honeycomb structure of big yeast bubbles, are often (but not always) smaller, with a puckered little hole. A subset, the old-fashioned doughnut, always has a cracked, craggy surface, and in the most classic versions the sides splay out like the petals of a flower.

For example, the Old Fashioned Cake Donut has a mild vanilla flavor with a slight nutmeg finish. These donuts take about 12-15 minutes to create from start to finish. A French Cruller* has a soft, airy texture with a pleasant light “egg-like” flavor. The center of the French Cruller is wet with a crunchy exterior.

The Doughnut emoji 🍩 depicts a doughnut, a commonly eaten baked good. It is commonly used to represent real and metaphorical doughnuts, breakfast, bakeries and baked foods, snacks, coffee breaks, The Simpsons, and negative stereotypes of police officers.

Although the outsides and the edges were crisp, the centers of the donuts were always greasy and doughy. Gregory suggested punching a hole in the middle of the fried cakes, so that the insides of the cakes would cook as evenly as the outsides.

Why are Amish donuts so good? ›

The ability to do this all in one swish in their food truck makes for the freshest, most delicate, and fluffiest donut you'll ever have. Why is an Amish donut so special? Amish doughnuts follow traditional recipes and are always made from scratch. The basics include sugar, flour, milk, yeast, and eggs.

Use real cake flour – not DIY cake flour!

DIY substitutions don't really cut it, and AP flour will not create doughnuts with that same soft texture. Also, bleached cake flour will work best. Unbleached (like King Arthur Baking) won't absorb as much moisture, and you may end up with doughnuts that crumble while frying.

What kind of oil is best for cooking donuts? The best oil is the one with the least flavour. Vegetable oil and canola oil are both very good in this respect. The most important thing is to use the same oil for the same kinds of foods, since oil readily absorbs flavours and aromas.

One of the most popular credits American seafarer Hanson Gregory with inventing the donut's hole in 1847 while aboard a lime-trading ship. He was just 16 years old at the time. As the story goes, Gregory wasn't happy with the doughy consistency of the fried cakes served on the ship.

One story claims that early colonial settlers accidentally discovered the joy of fried dough one day when a cow kicked a pot of boiling oil onto some pastry mix, creating fried cake. But the settlers didn't share the culinary inspiration with their overseas counterparts.

Vernon Rudolph bought a secret yeast raised doughnut recipe from a New Orleans French chef, rented a building in what is now historic Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and began selling its Krispy Kreme doughnuts on July 13, 1937 to local grocery stores.