DIY Heart Doughnuts ♥

 

... or should that be Donuts?!  That's probably what lots of you all reading this thought!  It is the 5th year I have been living in Canada, but there are some things I haven't changed in my spelling, or how I say things.  So my apologies to you if you were expecting donuts!  But please believe me, doughnuts and donuts ARE the same great tasting treats we all love!

 

I hope you all had a LOVEly Valentine's Day celebrating ♥ My husband treated me to a delicious dinner he cooked all afternoon ... an incredible lamb roast (my favourite), with mushroom risotto (my favourite favourite!) and then I did dessert... And well, I think you already know what it is!

 

Last year he also did dessert and thought it would be fun to make our own truffles!  Check out last year's Valentine's post to see more on that... He prepared the chocolate truffle, but we scooped and chose the toppings to roll them in - they were so delicious!

 

So this year, I wanted something we both liked, but that also would be fun to do together after dinner... Cue the DIY doughnuts!  During the day I did the prep work for them.  Making the dough, letting it rise, cutting it out into the heart shapes and then letting it rise once again before baking them.

 

That's right - BAKED doughnuts!   SO healthy right?!  I think in comparison to fried yes... still they're doughnuts but whatever - it was Valentine's Day!  Still, they were pretty good!!

 

I'll start with the recipe and pictures... but keep reading to see the fun part of decorating them which is the bit we did together! 

 

I originally found the recipe here on Spark People Recipes, and although I halved the recipe (which made plenty for the 2 of us!) there are a couple of things I would change next time I make the recipe which I will mention here just in case you want to try it too.

 

Ingredients (to make 12-16 heart doughnuts, depending on the size you make!)

 

2 - 2.5 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon yeast

1/2 cup milk (we drink 1% so that's what went into these!)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/8 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

 

Method

 

1.  Mix 1 cup of flour with the yeast.

 

 

2.  Heat the milk, butter and sugar until it reaches 140°F (I found this to be when the milk was simmering but not boiling yet).

 

 



 

3.  Add the milk mixture to the flour, along with the eggs, and mix until smooth.  (Here's where I would change something next time... I wasn't convinced that all of my yeast was completely dissolved in the milk.  I might do that separately from the flour next time and then add it afterwards).

 

4.  Add more flour, a little at a time until the dough is smooth.

 

 

5.  Cover and let the dough rise in a warm, draft-free area for 1 hour, until it doubles in size.  

 

6.  Split the dough in half and roll each half into a rectangle.  Using a heart shaped cookie cutter (or 2 as I did for different sizes!) cut out hearts from each half.  Use as much of the dough as possible!

 

 



 



7.  Grease two baking sheets and place the hearts on them.  Let them rise for another 30 minutes and preheat your oven to 375°F. 

 

8.  Bake the doughnuts for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown.

 

... Now for the fun DIY part of the evening.  Decorating the doughnuts (once they were cool!) :)

 

We each had 4 of the best looking ones as our "real" doughnuts to decorate.  But we also had a few small ones each (which I think didn't hold their heart shape as well) and a couple of extra large sized that well, just didn't look as pretty as these!

 

 

Dinner cleaned up and our decorating workstation ready!!  For most of the doughnuts I made a little water icing - powdered sugar and a little water stirred up and ready to use!

 



 

This is one of my favourites that Jonathan made!  Icing on top with cookies and cream crumble all over the top.  I can totally see this one at Tim Horton's!!

 

Here are my four you've already seen up at the top...

 

 

Icing and chocolate sprinkles...

White icing and edible pearls for the classy look...

 

The colourful fun guy dipped in sprinkles!

 



And the pink writing icing stripes on this one... I wouldn't usually choose pink, but well it was Valentine's Day after all ♥

These are Jonathan's featured four!  He has the cookies and cream... a good old fashioned plain doughnut dipped in sugar... the bottom left one might look the same as this but actually it's filled with Strawberry Rhubarb JAM!!  (His favourite!)... and then the final one is a glazed doughnut!

The original recipe said if we shook the hot doughnuts in sugar it would stick... Hmm well we tried this and it didn't work for us!  So we melted some butter and lightly greased them up before dipping them in sugar.  This did stick so it worked for us :)

 

Anddd, with icing and creativity still leftover we also decorated some of the small hearts as well!  

 

We were pretty impressed with the taste of the baked doughnuts and it was a lot of fun to create and decorate these together as part of our Valentine's Day dinner ♥

 

Have a great week & thanks for reading!!

 

*** My blog is 1 year old ***

 

Look back at what I wrote 1 year ago today!

 

Sunday Tea Cakes ~ Click here to read about these pretty mini sponge cakes!