Jelly doughnuts

At this busy holidays time we don’t have time for anything, so we are also not cooking too much and I am becoming a pizza expert … love that Private Selection at Fry’s, the grilled chicken garlic caesar thin crust one and Freschetta’s Spinach mushroom are the best!

Since I am still trying to read blogs regularly I came across with this Hanukkah post on Russian Artists Etsy Team blog and the donuts idea just stuck in my head! I bought some donuts at our local shop but they did not hit the spot. Hanukkah, of course is so much more than just making a donuts and latkes but I thought I should try to make some jelly donuts myself. How hard can it be?

Well, turned out that making donuts overall is not hard and even enjoyable but I needed some time.

You will need glass bowls, wooden spoon, a wooden rolling pin and 2 round cookie cutters, 2” and 2 ½” in diameter. I did not have any round cookie cutters in my house so I used 2 thin glass wine glasses, these we have plenty of. :)

So to make these you will need:
1 cup milk
1 package active dry yeast 1/4 oz
2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoon warm water
3 cups of all purpose flour plus extra for adding as needed
2 large eggs
your favorite jelly
vegetable oil
powdered sugar for dusting

To make the dough:
In a small saucepan bring the milk to a simmer, then remove it from heat and stir in the sugar and salt. Let it cool until lukewarm.
In a separate small bowl dissolve the yeast in warm water. Stir it until it is creamy then let it rest for about 5 minutes until foamy.
In a separate large bowl mix together with a wooden spoon, the milk mixture, 2 tablespoon oil, eggs, 2 1/2 cups flour and yeast mixture to make very soft dough. Transfer to a wooden board dusted with flour and knead the dough by hand adding flour in small portions as needed to make dough smooth and elastic. Knead for a total of about 5 minutes.

Let dough sit and rise. After that transfer it to a clean glass bowl dusted with flour, cower it with clean kitchen towel and leave for about 2 hours or until it has doubled in size.

Transfer dough to a floured surface and roll it out to about ½” thick. Cut out rounds using 2” cutter. Now, take one round dough and stretch it to about 2 ½” in diameter. Put 1 teaspoon of jam in a middle. Stretch the second round the same way and cover first one with it. Pinch edges to prevent jam from running out. Cut around the filled donut with your 2 ½” cutter to seal the edges and transfer it to a separate floured surface. Continue the same way with the rest of dough, than cover the filled donuts with a clean kitchen towel and let it sit and rise for about 30 minutes.

You will have leftover dough from the cutting. You can re-roll it once and make more filled donuts but I just cut mine in all kind of shapes, left it to rise and then fried it together with filled donuts.

Heat vegetable oil in a deep fryer or Dutch oven to about 365’F and fry donuts 2 at a time for about 2 minutes each, turning once, until golden brown in color. Transfer ready ones to a paper towel to absorb the extra oil and continue cooking the rest of them.

Serve the jelly donuts warm and dusted with powdered sugar on top.