I wasn't going to do any more Halloween baking this year but saw a video tutorial from Wilton, the US cake decorating brand, on Facebook for doughnuts and realised I had the doughnut tin that they used in the recipe. So I made a quick batch of baked doughnuts - they are quite easy to make as you bake them in the oven, so no hot oil to deal with - and decorated them as spider webs and pumpkins. Easy to do, and fun for the kids to join in with. You can even hand these out to any trick or treaters who come knocking!
I used this recipe from the Wilton website. Translated for UK bakers (we don't have 'cake flour' over here, you need:
2 cups (300g) plain flour
3/4 cup (175g) caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup (175ml) buttermilk
2 tbsp. butter, melted
to decorate:
icing sugar
water
black and orange food colouring (gel works best)
Preheat oven to 220C. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl and then beat in the buttermilk and butter until you have a thick batter.
To decorate, lay some kitchen towel or newspaper under your cooling rack as the icing will drip through. Mix icing sugar with a few drops of water, adding a few more drops until you have a thick and slightly runny consistency, that drops off the spoon but isn't liquid. Separate into three bowls with two containing more icing than the other - the smallest bowl is the one you will leave white.
Add orange food colouring (I used Wilton gel colour) to one bowl and black to another and beat in. Use a teaspoon to drizzle the orange icing over half the doughnuts. If you like you can add a green stalk for the pumpkin or even edible eyes if you have them or want to make them from fondant!
Cover the remaining doughnuts with black icing. While it is still tacky, spoon the white icing into a piping bag and snip off the end so you have a small opening. Pipe concentric white circles onto the black doughnuts. Take a cocktail stick (toothpick) and drag lines through the icing from the outside to the inside; this will give a spiderweb effect. Leave the icing to set and enjoy!
Grease a doughnut pan with Cake Release or similar and fill the holes until 3/4 full. Bake in the preheated oven for 7-9 minutes until risen and springy. Allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes then cool on a cooling rack.
I'm sending these as a last-minute entry to the Food Calendar challenge hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.
