dipped in glaze

I mentioned my obsession with donuts in my previous post, and I tried yet another variation of a baked donut this week with making French crullers for the first time! My best friend Debbie, upon hearing about my recent donut-making adventures, sent me this awesome book: Doughnuts: Simple and Delicious Recipes to Make at Home, by Lara Ferroni. There are tons of recipes in it, from traditional fried doughnuts to baked variations and some really exotic flavors. Just looking through the photos of the donuts had me drooling! Thank you bestest for the thoughtful gift. ♥ (She always sends me the most perfect gifts — A few months ago, it was massage bars and body butter from Lush to help soothe my stretching belly.)

I can’t wait to try making all sorts of donuts from the book, but I decided to try making one of the basic classics before I moved onto the more ambitious creations. So I decided to make the classic French cruller.

What’s interesting about making crullers is that in order to form the pâte à choux, you initially boil the dough in a pot, steaming away the water:

boiling the doughnut dough, steaming away the water

You then throw the dough into a mixer and slowly add in the eggs, mixing with a paddle attachment until peaks form, to create the pâte à choux pastry dough.

dough in the mixer

The more traditional method of making crullers calls for frying them, but the recipe offered alternative instructions for baking, so I went the baking route since I figured it was easier, healthier, and would create less of a mess for me to clean up afterward. For baking, you pipe the pâte à choux with a star-tipped pastry bag onto parchment paper.

piping the donuts

Here’s what they look like fresh out of the oven! They were so fluffy and lighter than air.

fluffy doughnut!

Once they’ve cooled, you dip them in a honey glaze to give them the glistening look and sweet taste.

our first attempt at French crullers

They came out pretty good and comparable to the French crullers you can find in donut shops! My only issue was that I have a strong taste aversion to eggs, and the crullers ended up tasting a little too eggy for me to stomach too much of. :(  (I should have considered this before I decided to make the recipe which called for the most eggs in the book! lol)  The hubby has been doing a good job of devouring them on my behalf, though, and I will definitely be consuming a lot more of whatever donuts I decide to make next….