The smell of fresh doughnuts frying is like nothing else. If they bottled it, I’d wear it as perfume, leaving a faint whiff of “funfair” trailing behind me everywhere I’d go. You’d smell me coming a mile away and know I’d been around hours after I’d gone. From a purely practical point of view (and not at all a gluttonous one), this would also make me a very hard person to kidnap. I should probably stop watching so many Netflix true crime shows.

Back to doughnuts.

My vegan doughnut dough has a stretchy-smooth quality, as well as a slight sweetness which I find hopelessly irresistible once fried. Despite being made up of flour, sugar and oil, each pillowy puff is lighter than air. A combination of almond milk, lemon, yeast and baking powder give them an ethereal weightlessness that you only get when you eat them hot, as soon as they’re made. I defy anyone to spot the lack of eggs and dairy in this recipe.

In my book, no variety of cakey baked doughnut comes close to the utterly fuzzy feeling you get from eating a yeasted, fried doughnut. It of course, involves hot oil and for you to set aside a bit of therapeutic baking time but there are moments you can break away to catch up on your favourite TV show, drink wine and/or have a power nap. The results are special and not at all cake like. The dough needs to be left to rise and this is when the magic happens. Keep it in a warm place like an airing cupboard or even in the oven with just the light left on inside.

Swap almond milk for soy milk or oat milk if you want to make a nut-free version of these doughnuts — both work beautifully. Over the years I’ve realised you can add most of the ingredients to the hot milk mixture with little to no compromise on results, which makes the dough-making process much easier. There’s no adding of butter in stages involved either. Reserve the salt and baking powder and add them to the flour mixture. Once the warm-ish milk hits the flour, all of those lovely raising agents join forces to work their magic as the gluten in the flour develops through the kneading process. You can use your hands to knead the dough if you have arms of steel and the stamina to do it for 25 minutes or so. I do not have such superpowers and my stand mixer is my friend.

More ideas: You can switch the cardamom sugar for cinnamon sugar and fill these with your favourite thick vegan custard instead of jam. Or better yet, fill them with both jam and custard. I’ve done this before and I don’t want to say everyone liked me more that week, but they definitely did. Vegan lemon curd is also a noble choice of filling and it works particularly well with cardamom sugar. I have also successfully steeped my warm milk with saffron strands for a saffron flavoured doughnut and it was dreamy, like the best marriage of Indian mithai and a classic funfair doughnut. Be creative and report back with your results. I’d love to hear from you.

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Vegan Raspberry Jam Doughnuts with Cardamom Sugar

Pillowy puffs of vegan doughnut goodness! These sweet treats are filled with sharp raspberry jam and coated with a spectacular cardamom sugar. You won’t be able to stop at just one.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American, Indian

Keyword cardamom, dessert, doughnuts, jam, vegan

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 50 minutes minutes

Servings 12

Author Sanjana

Ingredients

• 500 g strong white bread flour plus 20g for rolling out
• 12 g fast-action dried yeast
• 40 g caster sugar
• 100 g vegan margarine
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 250 ml unsweetened almond milk
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 L rapeseed oil for deep frying

For the filling:

• 200 g your favourite shop-bought or homemade raspberry jam I prefer seedless

For the cardamom sugar:

• 150 g caster sugar
• 4 cardamom pods seeds removed and crushed to a powder

Instructions

• Place the flour, baking powder and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment.
• Next, add the milk, butter, sugar and vanilla to a saucepan and heat over a low heat until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Allow to cool at room temperature to about 38°C/100°F or just warm. Add the lemon juice and yeast and stir. Set aside for ten minutes.
• Add the milk mixture to the stand mixer and switch it on to slow. Once the mixture has come together, knead on medium-high speed for 15 minutes. Keep an eye on your mixer to ensure it doesn’t overheat or climb its way across the worktop (I speak from experience here). Once the dough is soft and smooth, the dough is ready to proof.
• Remove the dough from the bowl and grease the sides of the bowl with a tablespoon of oil. Return the dough to the bowl and cover with a clean, damp tea towel. Allow to rest in a warm place for 60 minutes, until it has doubled in size.
• Knock the risen dough back to remove large air bubbles but do not knead it again. Dust your work surface with flour and roll the dough out until it’s about 2cm in thickness. Use a round cookie cutter to stamp out circles of dough and arrange on a tray lined with parchment paper. Leave some space between them, as you don’t want them to stick together while they prove again.
• Cover loosely with cling film and leave in a warm place for for 30 minutes.
• To make the cardamom sugar, mix together the sugar and ground cardamom in a bowl.
• Fill a heavy-based saucepan halfway with oil. Heat the oil to 175°C/350°F.
• When the oil is heated, carefully slide the doughnuts from the tray using a floured spatula. Taking care not to deflate them, put them into the oil. Do 2-3 per batch, depending on the size of your pan. Don’t overcrowd the pan. I did 2 at a time.
• Fry for 2 minutes on each side until golden brown. They will puff up and float to the top of the oil, so you will need to gently move them around the pan to ensure they colour evenly.
• Remove the doughnuts from the fryer and place them on kitchen paper to absorb any excess oil.
• Place the jam in a bowl and microwave on high power for 20 seconds. Stir well to loosen slightly.
• Fit a piping bag with a medium, round tip. Using a straw, make a small hole in the side of each doughnut, about halfway until it reaches the centre. Fill the doughnut with the warm raspberry jam through this hole, about two teaspoons of jam per piece. Repeat for the remaining doughnuts.
• Gently roll the doughnuts in the cardamom sugar until evenly coated. Serve warm.

Notes

Store the doughnuts covered and at room temperature. Best consumed within 24 hours. Will they all be eaten before then? Definitely.

The post Vegan Raspberry Jam Doughnuts with Cardamom Sugar appeared first on Sanjana.Feasts.

You might have already seen my previous recipe for Vegan Saffron, Strawberry and Lime Meringue Nests which I did a YouTube video for and still, I’m raving about the endless possibilities aqua faba or ‘bean water’ holds for the future of vegan baking. No longer do I waste and drain away the water from cans of chickpeas, butter beans and pinto beans. Rather, I save them and whip them in to the fluffiest meringue peaks you’ve ever seen.

Just like egg whites, this bean water is packed with protein and when it’s whipped with sugar, becomes glossier than that expensive French manicure you just got.

It’s this that makes glorious desserts like pavlova, eton mess and meringue cakes possible and it’s this that’s lit me up from inside. I’m so hungry to experiment with magic aqua faba more and I can’t wait to share more of these vegan-friendly creations with you.

This recipe is unbelievably basic but the results are slap-you-in-the-face pretty. I promise, everyone will be asking how you did it. I did toy with the idea of using fresh fruit to create the stripes but aqua faba meringue can be quite temperamental. Any trace of grease, oil, excess water or fat will very quickly deflate the mixture and all those beautiful air bubbles will be gone.

Also, I’ve had lots of comments on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram about whether you can taste the chickpeas in the end product. The short answer is no. After adding vanilla, natural fruit extracts and baking for over 2 hours, there’s no trace of chickpea flavour.

If you’re looking to try it with fresh fruit, I’d suggest really blending it to a very smooth puree, boiling with a little sugar and reducing right down so the water content is minimal. Cool it completely before using.

I opted to use natural concentrated mango and raspberry extracts, which you can buy online from Amazon. The flavour they give these otherwise very simple vanilla meringues is so incredibly intense.

Stick with me for more vegan meringue experiments.

Vegan Mango, Raspberry and Vanilla Meringues

Ingredients

1 x 400g tin chickpeas in unsalted water, drained and the liquids reserved
140g icing sugar
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways and seeds scraped

For the raspberry stripe:
Wilton gel food colouring in rose
2 drops vegan raspberry extract

For the mango stripe:
Wilton gel food colouring in lemon yellow
2 drops vegan mango extract

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 100C. Line three large baking trays with greaseproof paper.

2. Drain the chickpeas and reserve the water. Put the chickpeas in a container and use it to make Channa Masala or Hummus later.

3. Pour the chickpea water into the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the balloon whisk attachment. Make sure your bowl is really clean and grease free. Any oil will cause your meringue to deflate.

4. Whisk on a high speed for 4 minutes. Gradually add the sugar and continue to beat. During this time, add the cream of tartar and vanilla.

5. In a small bowl, add a teaspoon of the lemon yellow gel food colouring and two drops of vegan mango extract. Stir to combine. Repeat in a separate bowl for the rose colouring and raspberry extract.

6. Fit a large piping bag with a large round tipped piping nozzle. Use the back of a teaspoon to stripe the two colours lengthways all the way up inside the piping bag but not right to the top – leave at least 2 inches at the top free of any colour. Use two different spoons to keep the colours separate. I did three stripes of each colour.

7. Place the bag inside a large mug and fold down the top slightly. Fill your piping bag with half the meringue mixture and holding the nozzle straight, pipe 1 ½-inch chubby meringues, pulling away quickly when you get to the top to achieve those cute little peaks. Leave a bit of space around each meringue to ensure they don’t touch in the oven. I have a quick video for this on Instagram. I’m @korasoi.

8. Wash out your bag and repeat this process for the remaining meringue mixture.

9. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 2 ½ hours or until the meringues are totally dry to the touch and come away from the baking paper easily. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

10. Serve with your favourite vegan ice cream, on top of cakes, or dip the bottoms in melted vegan chocolate and crushed freeze-dried raspberries or chopped nuts. You can also serve them with fresh raspberries, mango slices and whipped coconut cream, but assemble this right before you want to eat or the meringues are likely to dissolve.

Go on, experiment with your favourite flavours and colours. I’d love to see where your imagination takes you.

Love Sanjana

The post Vegan Mango, Raspberry and Vanilla Meringues appeared first on Sanjana.Feasts.

Turns out it’s only bloody brilliant.

I’ve been nuts about pistachio desserts ever since my taste buds got their first fix of the gorgeously-green ice cream as a kid. That sweet fragrance of pistachios and just a hint of almond reminds me of both Indian sweet shops with their rows upon rows of Pista Halwa and cherry-topped Bakewell Tarts. It’s what I imagine heaven for sweet-toothed food bloggers smells like. Also present in said heaven would be Mr Kipling (the master of baked goods), Lionel Ritchie (with his smooth-as-buttermilk voice) and Madhuri Dixit (with her timeless beauty). So like all the components of this, my dream cake… all the greats.

To get the perfect green pistachio paste, the pistachios should be unsalted, shelled and skinned. If you have the good fortune to encounter them in all their emerald-green glory in a shop, buy them. If, like me, you can’t find them, you’ll need to remove the outer shells, blanch them in boiling water for three minutes, drain and refresh under cold water, then slip the skins off. Finally, give them a quick toast in a hot oven.

Marzipan gives the paste a delicious nutty edge and liquid glucose brings it all together like a dream.

In this recipe, I use a combination of sweetened condensed milk, milk powder and buttermilk as an egg replacer and it really works wonders in helping the cake hold its structure once risen which I find is the trickiest part of egg-free baking.

Finish the cake with a slathering of cream cheese frosting, raspberries and extra pistachios. A few white chocolate curls are also welcome to join the party.

Eggless Pistachio and Raspberry Buttermilk Cake
Serves 10-12

Ingredients

For the pistachio paste blend together:
200g pistachios, shelled and skinned
150g white marzipan
220ml liquid glucose
A drop of green food colour, if required

For the cake:
1 x 397g tin sweetened condensed milk
180g caster sugar
320ml buttermilk
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
190ml groundnut oil
3 tbsp pistachio paste
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tbsp skimmed milk powder
450g cake flour

For the frosting:
250g unsalted butter, softened
250g full-fat cream cheese
300g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract

To decorate:
400g raspberries
Pistachios
White chocolate curls

Method

1. Grease and line two 10-inch wide x 4-inch deep cake tins.

2. Pre-heat the oven to 160C.

3. In a stand mixer, combine the condensed milk, milk powder, cider vinegar, buttermilk, oil, pistachio paste and sugar. Beat on high speed for 5 minutes.

4. Sift in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in three stages, folding in gently between each. Don’t overbeat this.

5. Divide the cake batter between the two prepared tins, smoothing out the tops.

6. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a sharp knife inserted into the middles comes out clean. It’s really important not to open the oven door for the first 30 minutes – your cakes will almost certainly collapse if you do.

7. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Leave to cool completely.

8. To make the cream cheese frosting, in a stand mixer beat together the butter, vanilla and sugar (add the sugar gradually) for 5 minutes or until pale and fluffy. Next, add in the cream cheese and beat in very briefly. If you overwork this, the frosting will become runny. Keep in the fridge until ready to use.

9. To decorate, sandwich the cakes together with half of the cream cheese and an even layer of raspberries. Top with the remaining frosting. Scatter with pistachios and white chocolate curls.

Enjoy with your favourite people or all by yourself.

Love Sanjana

The post Eggless Pistachio and Raspberry Buttermilk Cake appeared first on Sanjana.Feasts.