Crème Brûlée Donuts Recipe – No Stand Mixer is Needed

This recipe teaches us how to make crème brûlée donuts with a tanghulu-like crunchy caramelized topping and a creamy homemade custard filling.

For the donut dough: The higher the water content of the dough, the fluffier the donuts will be, it will also help keep the donuts soft for a longer period of time.

A good news is that you can totally knead this moist dough by hand – no stand mixer is needed for this recipe.

For the creamy custard filling: We have made this classic pastry cream for our strawberry cream puffs. In this crème brûlée donuts recipe, I blended some homemade less-sweet strawberry jam into the original flavor custard sauce to add some fruity flavor🍓.

For the brûlée topping: It’s the same as the tanghulu’s hardened sugar syrup coat. You can check out my tanghulu recipe for more detailed instructions for making and testing the sugar syrup.

EQUIPMENT for making crème brûlée donuts:

• Large mixing bowl – for making the dough
• Medium pot – for deep frying the donuts
• Piping bag – for piping the custard filling
• Cooling rack – for draining the excess oil
• Food thermometer (optional) – for monitoring the sugar syrup’s temperature

INGREDIENTS for making crème brûlée donuts:

Donut Dough:

• 1 large egg (about 50g without shell)
• 145 g milk (½ cup + 1 tbsp) – You may need to increase or reduce the amount of milk based on the size of the egg. Make sure that the total weight of egg and milk is 195 grams.
• 4 g instant yeast (1¼ tsp) – Instant yeast doesn’t require proofing before adding to the dough. You can substitute instant yeast 1:1 by weight for active dry yeast. If so, make sure you proof the active dry yeasts with lukewarm milk (about 100°F) before adding the flour. (You can follow step 1 and step 2 in this bread recipe.)
• 300 g all purpose flour (2 cups + 2 tbsps) – You can also use bread flour to make your donuts soft yet chewy! But do not use cake flour.
• 30 g granulated sugar (2½ tbsp)
• 3 g salt (½ tsp) – Skip the salt if you use salted butter.
• 35 g unsalted butter (Room temperature softened. 2½ tbsp) – See how to soften butter in this post.
• Cooking oil (about 2 inch depth of oil in your pot) – Ideally use vegetable oil. You can also use corn oil, sunflower oil, and canola oil.

Brûlée Syrup:

• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup water

Custard filling:

• 3 egg yolks
• 30 g granulated sugar (2½ tbsp)
• 15 g cornstarch (2 tbsp)
• 7.5 g all purpose flour (1 tbsp)
• 300 g milk (1¼ cup) –  You can also use soymilk, cashew, oat milk, or coconut milk.
• 10 g unsalted butter
• 150g strawberry jam (optional) – Ideally use homemade strawberry jam which is less sweet.

Step-by-step INSTRUCTIONS:

To make the custard filing

1. In a bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar until pale. Add cornstarch and flour to the egg yolks, whisk until smooth.

2. In a small saucepan, bring milk (or soymilk, cashew milk …) to a simmer over medium heat. Use a ladle to gradually drizzle the hot milk over the egg yolks. Keep whisking while adding the hot milk, otherwise the egg yolks might be cooked and get lumpy.

3. Pour the egg milk mixture back to the saucepan, cook over medium heat, stir constantly with a spatula or whisk.

4. Once the mixture turns thickened and start to bubble, cook for 1 more minute then turn off the heat. Add in butter, stir until well combined.

5. Transfer the custard to a shallow container (so that it cools down faster). Cover the surface with food wrap directly touching the custard to prevent the formation of drying skin.

6. Cool down the custard with an ice bath for about 10 minutes.

7. Once completely cooled, add the custard to a piping bag tipped with a round tip. Keep the custard filling in the refrigerator until ready to use. (See Note 1)

To make the donut dough

1. Add egg, milk, instant yeast, all purpose flour, granulated sugar, and salt to a large mixing bowl. Stir with a spatula until roughly combined. (The dough is very sticky now, so do not knead the dough with your hands yet.)

2. Cover the bowl with food wrap, rest the dough for 15 minutes. (The dough will be less sticky after the resting.)

3. Remove the food wrap, add the softened butter to the dough. Use your hands to knead the dough for about 3 minutes until the butter is fully absorbed. Then use the “slap & fold technique” (see note 2) to knead the dough for 5 more minutes until smooth.

4. Place the dough in the mixing bowl, cover the bowl with food wrap, rise the dough in a warm place for 1½ hour, or until it’s doubled in size. (Ideally use the proof/warm mode of your oven. It might take the dough 2 hours to rise under room temperature during winter time.)

5. Transfer the dough to a nonstick pastry mat, punch out the air from the dough by making a fist with your hands and punching the dough to deflate it.

6. Evenly divide the dough into 10 pieces (about 55g each). Knead each piece of the dough for 1 minute to remove air pockets, then roll into 10 balls.

7. Cut a sheet of parchment paper into 10 pieces of 5”x5” squares, arrange them on a baking pan. Place one dough ball on each piece of the parchment paper. Cover the baking pan with food wrap. Proof the dough balls in a warm place for 1 hour, or until they are doubled in size. (Ideally use the proof/warm mode of your oven. It might take the dough 2 hours to rise under room temperature during winter time.)

8. Gently flatten each dough ball into 3” diameter x 1” thick oblate spheroid.

9. Heat a pot of oil (about 2 inch depth of oil) to 330°F. Carefully place the dough with the parchment paper into the hot oil, hold one corner of the paper to lift it away. Deep fry one side of the donut for 2 minutes, flip and fry the other side for 2 minutes until golden. (Use medium low heat to keep the oil temperature stay between 320°F – 340 °F.)

10. Remove the donuts with a pair of tongs, place the fried donuts on a cooling rack (put a large baking pan underneath) to drain oil.

To make the brûlée topping

1. Add sugar and water to a small saucepan, boil over medium heat until the syrup’s temperature reaches 300 °F (see note 3). (It takes about 30 minutes for the syrup to reaches the desired status. So you can actually start to boil the syrup before you pipe the filling.)

2. Insert a chopstick into the donut until it almost reaches the opposite side, swing it left and right to create some space inside of the donut for the filling. Insert the tip of the piping bag into the donut, squeeze about 30g custard filling into each donut.

3. Once the syrup has reached 300 °F, remove it from the heat. Carefully dip one side of each donut into the hot syrup (IT’S VERY HOT), allow any excess sugar to drip back in the saucepan (otherwise the brûlée topping will be too thick), then place the donut on a cooling rack with the brûlée side facing up.

4. Enjoy after the brûlée topping is hardened. (A successful brûlée topping should harden almost immediately. If the topping is still sticky after 1 minute of resting, you should boil the syrup again to make sure that it reaches 300 °F.)

Storage of Crème Brûlée Donuts

• If you don’t fill the donuts with the custard filling, you can leave the brûlée donuts in an airtight container under room temperature for 2 days or in the fridge for 1 week.
• While donuts filled with custard need to be stored in an airtight container in the fridge, they can last for 2-3 days.

Notes & Tips for making crème brûlée donuts:

1: Strawberry Flavor Custard Filling

You should be able to get about 350g original flavor custard with the given ingredients. You can fill your donuts with this original flavor custard filling. Or if you prefer a strawberry flavor custard filling, you can mix 150g strawberry jam with the original custard. 

Since the brûlée topping is ready very sweet, I prefer the filling to be less sweet. Generally the fruit-to-sugar ratio for traditional strawberry jams is 1:1. I always prefer making my own strawberry jam with a 5:1 fruit-to-sugar ratio.

To easily make this strawberry jam, we add 250g chopped fresh strawberries and 50g granulated sugar to a small pot, stir until well combined. Cook the mixture over medium heat, keep stirring until the amount of the mixture has been reduced to half. 

You should end up getting about 150g strawberry jam. Transfer the strawberry jam to a bowl, let cool to room temperature, then store in an airtight container the fridge until ready to use. 

2. Slap & Fold Technique

The slap & fold technique is often used when the dough is very sticky and hard to be knead.

You just need to pick up the dough, hold one end of the dough, and slap the other end down to the bowl, then fold it over. Repeat for about 5 minutes until the dough turns from sticky to smooth. 

3. Iced water test

If you don’t have a food thermometer, you can do an iced water test to see if the syrup has reached the proper status.

Dip chopsticks into the syrup, then dip into iced water for 2 seconds. Take the chopsticks out from iced water, taste the syrup on chopsticks tips. When it turns hard and crunchy, the syrup has reached the proper status.

If the syrup is still sticky after going through iced water, that means the syrup hasn’t reached 300°F yet. You need to keep boiling it until it passes the iced water test.

4. The white line on donuts

The white line around the center of the donut is often considered as a symbol of a successful donut.

When fried, a successfully proofed fluffy donut will float above the mid-line, so that the top and bottom parts of the donut will be fried into golden brown, with a white beautiful ring on its waist.

If your donut doesn’t have the white line, one of the reason could be that it needs to be proofed for a longer time.

Another possible reason could be that you have flipped the donut for too many times in the hot oil. Once you put a donut dough in the hot oil, don’t flip it until the bottom side turns golden. We will fry each side of the donut for 2 minutes, which means that you will only need to flip it for 1 time! If you flip the donut too often, the middle line will also be fried and get colored.

5. Skip the custard filling and the brûlée topping

By following this recipe, you will get some fluffy, soft, yet chewy fried donuts. The warm freshly fried donuts already taste amazing when dipped into a simple cinnamon sugar mixture.

It’s totally fine if you don’t have the patience to make the custard filling or the sugar syrup. Simply mix ½ cup of granulated sugar and 1 tbsp of cinnamon powder, toss the donuts in the bowl of cinnamon sugar, and enjoy them warm!

6. How to proof dough in winter

In winter, I set my room temperature at 66 °F, which seemed to be too cold for proofing the donut dough. I left the dough to proof under room temperature for 1 hour, but it barely rose.

Then I surprisingly found out that my oven actually had a “proof/warm” mode. Yes, I had been living with my new oven for almost half year, and just found out its hidden function today.

My donut dough doubled in size within 30 minutes in the oven with the “proof/warm” mode. You can also set your oven to 100°F/ 38°C to create the ideal proofing environment for the dough.

If your oven can’t be set to a low temperature, you can place a large bowl of boiling water by the donut dough. Close the oven door and allow the dough to proof in the warm and humid oven.

7. Punch out the air

One of my favorite steps in making crème brûlée donuts is punching the dough. This important step is not only for fun, but also for breaking the large air pockets in the dough.

After the first 1.5 hour of rising, the dough is doubled in size with lots of large air pockets inside. We have to punch and knead the dough to remove the large bubbles, so that the dough can form even and fine bubbles during the final proofing process.

If you skip the punching or kneading step before roll the dough into small balls, your donuts will rise unevenly, fall apart in the pot, and have a hollow inside.

My other bread recipes you will also like: