Salted Caramel Doughnuts & Salted Caramel Apples on Stick – Happy Halloween!

I’m still on my salted caramel crusade, I think I probably just need to buy a box of the Bohemian chocolates that we sampled at the Chocolate Festival in Wellington and get over it. I mean a batch of doughnuts and caramel toffee apples in one weekend for a household of two is ridiculous and hubby doesn’t eat fruit and also decided he didn’t like salted caramel either… a little strange I know. I became the good neighbour, fobbing off my wares, sharing the love and the calories…cough..cough, that’s what friends are for right? I fried these doughnuts this time but I have been known to bake them in the past just like a bread roll and they are still rather good.

The toffee apples are for Halloween, it’s a funny treat isn’t it? An apple a day keeps the dentist away they say, I’m sure the dentist has a heart attack over these apples but no more so than when we get to pay our dentist bill. I went last week, just a routine check and teeth clean by the hygienist and it cost more than a whole orchard of apples and the toffee together, I should have taken him some toffee apples so we could all have broken out in a cold sweat together.

Ingredients – Doughnuts, makes 8

350g plain flour

70g brown sugar

1tsp instant yeast

165ml luke warm milk

1 free range eggs

70g butter, melted

vegetable oil for frying

Method

Combine the flour and sugar in a bowl.

Add the yeast to the milk and put aside for a few minutes until it starts to ferment. Then whisk the yeasty milk together with the eggs and melted butter. Add to the flour mix and combine into a dough ball.

Knead the dough for 8-10 minutes and press dough out on a floured working surface to approximately an inch thick.

Using a medium & very small cookie cutter, cut the doughnuts out with the large cutter and the cut the centres out of each doughnut with the small cutter. Place the doughnuts and the ‘whole’ separately on an oiled tray to prove, leaving enough space between them to double in size.

Oil the top if the doughnuts and cover the whole tray with a plastic bag, you’ll need to use 2 trays

Re-knead any dough left over and cut out further doughnuts.

Once dough is doubled in size they are ready to bake.

Heat approximately 300ml of vegetable oil to 190C in a heavy bottom pan, enough to be half the depth of the doughnuts. If you don’t have a themometre just do a test with a little piece of dough to check when it is hot enough. Its should slowly brown.

Add 2 to 3 to the pan and fry the doughnuts for approximately 1 minute then turn and fry for the same amount of time on second side.

Remove from saucepan with a slotted spoon and allow doughnuts to cool on kitchen paper.

Make the caramel at this stage and once it is ready the doughnuts will be cool enough to dip.

Ingredients – Caramel

1 cup brown sugar

100g butter

3 Tbsp water

1tsp salt

Method -Caramel

Combine the sugar, butter & water in a saucepan over low heat until the sugar has melted, stirring constantly.

Increase the heat and bring the caramel up to 146C (you will need a sugar thermometre)

Once it has reached temperature turn the heat off and lett it settle for a minute then dip both the doughnuts & apples into the caramel.

You can add an extra sprinkle of salt to the caramel if you wish.