Cream-filled Doughnuts

April 22, 2012 by ChefJohn | 3 Comments

I was curious if an empanada style doughnut turnover would work, so I placed a bit of the cream on this one, folded it over

Jason asked me to make some banana cream filled doughnuts for a private party so I tried several different techniques. I made a couple of batches of yeast risen doughnuts (recipe is in the back of my novel, Doughnuts for Amy) and also a cake doughnut recipe. Cake doughnuts are leavened with baking powder and/or baking soda. They’re fairly simple to make but they’re not what you would want to use for a filled doughnut. The dough is too dense. So I made a yeast doughnut batter and a banana cream filling.

1 quart half and half

2 cups sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup spiced rum

8 egg yolks

pinch of salt

two bananas

1/2 cup of cornstarch

Bring to a boil the half and half with the salt, rum and sugar. In a seperate bowl whisk the egg yolks and corn starch. When the cream comes to a boil, add a few tablespoons of the cream to the egg and whisk, a few more (you’re slowly heating up the cream) and then add the remaining cream. Return this to a boil, remove from heat then place in a bar blender, add the bananas, puree then strain through a fine mesh strainer. Cool over an ice bath.

and crimped it with a fork, sort of looks like a mini calzone

They were good but not what we were looking for, plus several of them popped open in the fryer and this one looks a bit done, the fryer was sert at 350 and it should really be a bit lower, 325 or so, otherwise all the sugar in the dough will burn up.

Rolled and Cut

I made 55 yeast doughnuts, cut them out with a biscuit cutter, then proofed for about 60 minutes at room temperature, I wante to make sure the doughnut's interior was spongy enough to hold the banana cream