Crème Brûlée Donuts
This recipe teaches us how to make crème brûlée donuts with a tanghulu-like crunchy caramelized topping and a creamy custard filling. No stand mixer is needed for making this soft and fluffy donut dough.
Equipment
- Large mixing bowl
- medium pot
- piping bag
- Cooling rack
Ingredients
Donut Dough
- 1 large egg (about 50g without shell)
- 145 g milk (½ cup + 1 tbsp)
- 4 g instant yeast (1¼ tsp)
- 300 g all purpose flour (2 cups + 2 tbsps)
- 30 g granulated sugar (2½ tbsp)
- 3 g salt (½ tsp)
- 35 g unsalted butter (Room temperature softened. 2½ tbsp)
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)
- 10 g unsalted butter
Instructions
To make the custard filing
- In a bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar until pale. Add cornstarch and flour to the egg yolks, whisk until smooth.
- 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.
- Pour the egg milk mixture back to the saucepan, cook over medium heat, stir constantly with a spatula or whisk.
- 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.
- 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.
- Cool down the custard with an ice bath for about 10 minutes.
- 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
- 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.)
- Cover the bowl with food wrap, rest the dough for 15 minutes. (The dough will be less sticky after the resting.)
- 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.
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.)
- Gently flatten each dough ball into 3'' diameter x 1'' thick oblate spheroid.
- 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.)
- 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
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Video
Notes
Note 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.
Note 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.
Note 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, you need to keep boiling it until it passes the iced water test.