Put those doughnut pans to work!

Do you ever get a kitchen gadget or piece of baking equipment that you can't resist the urge buy when you think of all the things you could make if you had it? I do that too often myself... just like those fancy doughnut pans I told myself I couldn't live without years ago.

I have used them maybe a total of three or four times and they mock me as I walk past the "shelf of rarely used goodies", knowing that I probably won't be picking them up today. Color them surprised when I finally reached for the pans so I could make these Poppy Seed Doughnuts!

Before I began working on the batter, I toasted a couple tablespoons worth of those blueish-grey poppy seeds to intensify their nutty flavor. For the batter, I did use a blend all-purpose flour and whole-wheat pastry flour to bump up the nutrition in these while keeping them light - however, they would work just as well with entirely all-purpose flour or even using white whole-wheat for the pastry flour part.

To moisten the batter, I used plain yogurt for the majority, along with a little tangy buttermilk and canola oil - you could use sour cream, instead of the yogurt, if you want to bump up the richness. Since lemon and poppy seeds have such an affinity for one another, a couple teaspoons of the fresh oily zest are also added in to brighten the flavor. The batter for these doughnuts is quite thick, but is still workable if you want to use a spoon to fill up the molds - however, if you just scoop it into a pastry bag, you can make short work of this process! Instead of dipping these in a sweet frosting once they are baked, we added that extra sweetness in another way. After I coated the doughnut pans with nonstick spray, we sprinkled each well with granulated sugar, which ended up being a crunchy golden finish on the baked doughnuts.

I have two pans - one for large dougnuts and one for mini's, so I split the batter between the two for fun. If you only have one pan, you can certainly bake these in two batches - just quickly clean the pan to cool it down, recoat it with nonstick spray and dust with sugar. These would also be a great excuse to bust out those decorative mini bundt pans you might have laying around! While you can't expect them to be as meltingly tender as a classic fried doughnut, for a cake doughnut, Jeff and I both quite enjoyed them. They were moist, without being wet or gummy, and those bits of poppy seeds peppered throughout each brought a pleasing textural crunch. Neither of us missed a glaze as that sugary topping was the perfect ending note.

Recipes

Poppy Seed Doughnuts