Doughnuts For The Win!

A few weeks ago I was walking down the isles of Michaels when I came upon a doughnut pan, I don't remember if it was on sale or if I used the Michaels app and used a 50% off coupon, anyways it came out to like 6 bucks. I just stored it away in a cabinet with my other pans never to see it again. Well Nisha's birthday morning rolled around and I didn't feel like making birthday cinnamon rolls (takes about 4 hours) I wanted to sleep in. Nisha also loves chocolate so I figured hey let me try this pan out. I also wanted to try this new gunmetal grey luster dust I had just bought. That's why I went with the Galaxy glazed chocolate doughnuts.

Galaxy Glazed Doughnuts

I love doughnuts and I thought it would be something special to bake. It was actually pretty fast, the doughnuts only take about 9 minutes to bake ( nowhere near 4 hours for birthday cinnamon rolls) and then once you glaze them about 6 minutes for them to fully set. Oh and aren't they a tiny bit healthier since they are baked and not fried. I actually went back to Michaels and bought another pan so I can back 12 doughnuts at a time now.

Galaxy Glazed Chocolate Doughnut

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cocoa
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 tablespoons melted butter ( cooled to room temperature)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2/3 cup buttermilk (if you don't have it 2/3 cup milk + 1 teaspoon of vinegar)

Galaxy Glaze

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• gel food coloring
• 3-4 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 350F

First sift together your cocoa powder, flour, salt, baking soda, and set aside.

sift all the dry ingredients together

give it a little whisk

In a mixing bowl place your sugar, brown sugar, melted butter, vanilla, and egg together

I use ghee in place of butter because it's already melted and it smells so good

 Add in your butter milk (milk+ 1 tablespoon of vinegar)

add your buttermilk or milk + vinegar ( i'm not buying buttermilk)

 whisk together all of your wet ingredients and add your dry ingredients into your wet ingredients.

your batter will be thick.

chocolatey goodness

 Place your doughnut batter into a piping bag or a ziploc bag with a corner cut off and fill your doughnut pan. (make sure you spray your pan, you don't want these to stick)

spray your pans (i'm paranoid, so I spray a lot)

these pans are so cute

Bake your doughnuts at 350F for 8-10 minutes, until you can stick a toothpick in them and it comes out clean. (if you lightly touch the doughnut it should spring back)

I like to leave my doughnuts in the tray for about 5- 10 minutes

Then take them out and let them cool on a wire rack until they are cooled completely ( you don't want to glaze hot doughnuts, the glaze will just run off)

Doughnuts cooling

 To make the glaze it's simple

Place two cups of powdered sugar in a bowl

powdered sugar

Add 3-4 tablespoons of milk and stir ( only add a tablespoon at a time and stir, check your consistency as you go) you don't want your glaze to be too runny or too thick. If it's too thick add more milk, if it's too thin you will need to add more powdered sugar.

this kind of looks like elmer's glue

For the galaxy glaze I just dotted black, navy, a light blue, purple, and pink gel food coloring in the white glaze.

I dotted the colors, you might try something else, this method seemed to work

 Then take a toothpick, a wooden skewer, or butter knife ( I used a wooden skewer) and swirl the colors together (don't mix too much, when you dip the doughnuts they will swirl the colors more

once you dip the doughnut the colors mix so well

Dip each doughnut in the glaze to cover each doughnut, (here's a tip keep parchment or something under your cooling rack to catch those drips, I didn't do that and had a mess to clean up afterwards) I also added a few white sprinkles, some white food color splatter, and I dusted a little edible silver dust on them. Let the glaze set before eating or touching these ( about 5 or so minutes) I really like how each doughnut is different. I love how the colors turned out.

Look at how cute these are

Tried to zoom in on the sparkles

this one had a bit more blue

this one had a bit more black

Ohhhhh some purple is coming out

Too pretty to eat

Look at these doughnuts guys.

I ate one, or two..hahahah

Lemon Poppyseed doughnut

• 1 cup all-purpose flour 
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon poppy seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons  unsalted butter, melted and slightly cool
• 1 large egg (room temperature)
• 1/3 cup  granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup milk (any works)
• 1/4 cup sour cream, or yogurt
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon lemon zest

Lemon Glaze

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons milk
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

I didn't take pictures of the process, but it's similar to the above doughnuts. After I glazed these with a lemon glaze I sprinkled a line of poppy seeds for a textural contrast and the design looks cool.



Preheat oven to 350F


Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, poppy seeds, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Whisk the melted butter, egg, sugar, milk, sour cream (or yogurt), vanilla, lemon juice, and zest until completely combined.

 Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not overmix. The batter will be thick.

Fill a pipping bag or ziploc bag with batter and  cut a corner off the bottom of the bag and pipe the batter into each donut cup, filling 2/3 – 3/4 of the way full.

Bake for 9–10 minutes or until the edges are lightly browned. Allow to cool for about 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack set on a large piece of parchment paper.

Allow donuts to cool down until you can handle them.


For the glaze

Whisk all of the glaze ingredients together. I usually use 2 tablespoons of milk, but for a slightly thicker glaze you can use 1 tablespoon. Dip each donut into the glaze and place back on the wire rack as the glaze sets. (The parchment paper can catch the glaze dripping down.)

These are really simple and delicious. You'll probably see more baked doughnut recipes in the future, especially since I have those two doughnut pans now.

Look at those beautiful Poppy Seeds, I love them so much.

Lemon Poppyseed Macarons For The Win!

This blog should basically be a macaron recipe blog. It seems like every post is about macarons. There are just so many flavor possibilities that I can just keep making different macarons. I had leftover poppyseed from mother's day and I had a jar of lemon curd that I made last week and I wanted to make something using that. I texted my brother and asked him if he liked lemon flavored things, and he said yes, so I knew I was going to make them for him (his next request are cinnamon macarons so I'll be making some cinnamon toast macarons next week). I wanted to use the cream cheese filling that I had leftover from the red, white, and blue macarons I made last week but I remembered that he doesn't like cream cheese flavored things. I ended up making a lemon poppyseed buttercream and I piped lemon curd in the center of the macarons for even more delicious lemony flavor. Overall everyone who tried them loved them.

Pretty Lemon macarons

Next macarons I may go back to making them the French method instead of the Italian method so if you are following this blog you can recreate them without boiling the sugar and needing a thermometer.

Ok let's start

Lemon Poppyseed Macaron Shell

• 150g of powdered sugar
• 150g of almond flour/meal
• 150g of granulated sugar
• 50g of water
• 120 g of room temperature egg whites separated into two bowls (60g each)
• 35 g of granulated sugar
• Yellow food color gel
• 2 tbs of poppy seeds

First take your powdered sugar + almond meal and run that through a fine mesh sieve. Then take a whisk and mix all the ingredients after they have been sifted, then just set aside.

Take 60g of your room temperature egg whites and fold it into your dry ingredients. This is going to form a thick almond paste, after folding just set the almond mixture aside.

This is also a great place for you to add food coloring to your almond paste, I added a few drops of yellow gel food coloring until the color I wanted was achieved. * remember the color will change once you add all of the white meringue so you may have to add more coloring later.

You only need a few drops

Pretty yellow

Now take your other 60g of egg whites and place them in your stand mixer on medium until they start to get foamy.

When your egg whites get foamy add in the 35g of granulated sugar slowly and mix on medium to high speed until soft peaks form.

when you achieve soft peaks turn down the speed of your mixer and keep your egg whites beating on low speed (like 1-2 speed)

Now take your 150g of granulated sugar and 50g of water  and place it in a saucepan on your stove on medium heat.

Let this boil until the temperature on your thermometer hits 240F (soft ball on candy thermometer)

Carefully take your sugar syrup and pour it down the side of your stand mixer ( in a slow steady stream) while the egg whites are whipping.

Continue whipping this mixture on high speed until your bowl cools down and stiff peaks form so about 10-15 minutes you should have a very glossy, shiny merengue, flip the bowl over and it shouldn't move.

Now take 1/3rd of the egg whites and fold it into your almond paste

Now once your 1/3 meringue  and almond paste combine you can add all of the meringue and continue folding.

ready to pipe

Take your macaron batter and place in a large piping bag with a round tip attached.

On a parchment lined tray pipe out 1.5 inch circles, tap your tray on the counter top once finished piping. I then sprinkled poppy seeds on top of each shell for garnish so they would let you know what flavor macaron you are eating.

resting shells

whats a better combination than lemon and poppyseed

Preheat your oven to 300F

Let them sit on your counter to create a skin (I like to let them rest at least 30 minutes, normally an hour as I clean up the kitchen) You will know they are ready when you touch the macaron shell and nothing sticks to your finger. The macaron will also turn a flat matte finish.

Place your macarons in the 300F oven for 14-16 minutes (I rotate the tray at the 7 minute mark)

While they are baking you can make the buttercream frosting

Lemon Poppyseed Buttercream

• 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)
• 1 cup of powdered sugar
• 3 tsp of poppy seeds
• 3 tsp of lemon zest
• 1tbs of lemon extract

First place butter in stand mixer with paddle attachement and whip for about 5 minutes, butter will turn a pale yellow color.

Next add in your 1 cup of powdered sugar and mix to combine

After you have the butter and powdered sugar whipped together add in poppyseed, lemon zest, and lemon extract and blend to combined.

Place mixture into a piping bag

I also placed some lemon curd that I made last week into a pipping bag to dollop in the center

Lemon Curd Recipe

This buttercream taste amazing

I then take them out of the oven and off of the baking tray and place them on the counter top still on the parchment paper to cool 

Baked shells

After a few minutes I like to match up the macaron shells of similar size and get them ready to be filled.

It's like a puzzle game, match those shells

Place the lemon poppy seed buttercream and lemon curd in a piping bag and place it in your fridge to chill and firm up. This can be made ahead of time. 

ready to fill

Just pipe a bit buttercream in a circle on one side of your macaron.

Ring of Poppyseed buttercream

Next I placed a dollop of lemon curd inside each ring of buttercream

So Yummy

Then just place a macaron shell on top and sandwich together

Smoosh it close

Now just sandwich them together. Place your macarons in an airtight container in the fridge and let them mature for at least 24 hours. They will taste amazing and all of the flavors will meld together. I think if you love lemon these are the treats you need in your life. These look great and taste sort of like a lemon cream pie. These would make a great treat for any BBQ dessert table so try these out.

These are fun to make and even more fun to eat