Amaama to Bonkler: Doughnuts

I’m going to start this off with a confession: although I cook quite a bit, I really don’t make desserts all that often. In fact, I’ve done it like once in my life. So, after watching the 5th episode of Amaama to Inazuma (Sweetness and Lightning), I wanted to try challenging myself by making a different genre of food than what I’m used to. In some ways, that’s the whole point of doing anime-inspired cooking: it’s an excuse to cook things I don’t normally make.

In that episode, they make doughnuts from scratch. Specifically, yeast doughnuts which are somewhat airy.

Doughnuts!

Another reason I really wanted to try making these is that I’ve never had fresh doughnuts before. While cold grocery store/bakery doughnuts that have been sitting for a few hours (or more) are fine, I’m sure that freshly fried doughnuts must be amazing. Like the difference between fresh and cold fried chicken.

So as I understand it, baking has a different methodology than other types of cooking. Rather than technique, it’s more about being precise. So, this recipe will call for measuring ingredients by weight rather than volume which means you’ll need a kitchen scale. Also, as seen in the episode, keeping the frying oil at a specific temperature is vital so you’ll also need a kitchen thermometer.

Don’t let this happen.

Also, since this recipe calls for lots of double-boiling (which I’ll get into later), a metal mixing bowl of some sort will be needed. Lastly, to do the actual frying, some sort of pot that can handle the high temperatures is needed. A wok (like I use) or dutch oven works just fine if you don’t have a fryer.

Ingredients and Tools (makes 8 doughnuts: enough to mess up a few when frying)

Tools:

Dutch oven or wok or fryer (for frying the doughnuts)

Kitchen scale

Metal mixing bowl (to double boil)

Kitchen thermometer (to measure oil temperature when frying)

Dough:

Butter (warmed to room temperature) – 30g

Group A:

All-purpose flour* – 200g

Dry yeast – 4g

Granulated sugar – 20g

Salt – 4g

Group B:

Egg – 1

Whole milk – 70 mL

Glazes:

Matcha Green Tea Glaze

(makes 1 cup)

Confectioner’s sugar – 2 cups

Matcha green tea powder – 1.5 tbsp

Boiling water – 1/4 cup

Mocha Glaze

(makes 1 cup)

Grated semisweet chocolate – 6 oz.

Confectioner’s sugar – 1 cup

Kosher salt – 1/8 tsp

Heavy cream – 1/2 cup

Instant coffee/espresso powder – 1.5 tbsp

A few notes about the recipe. You might notice that it differs from the anime episode a bit. I’m actually using one based from the manga. It makes 8 as opposed to 10 like in the manga. Also, a few of the measurements in the anime version seem wrong. In particular, they call for 9g of sugar which is really low (as compared to pretty much any other yeast doughnut recipe). Also, butter shouldn’t be in Group B, it’s added during the kneading process, as you’ll see.

* Why not strong/weak flour as the original recipe calls? What is even strong/weak flour (which we don’t have in the US)? Apparently it has to do with protein content in the flour, bread flour is an example of “strong” and cake flour is “weak”. Luckily, all-purpose flour is in-between and we were gonna mix the two anyway, so it’s easier just to use all-purpose flour (and it’s what I have in my pantry).

Doughnuts via Amaama

Recipe:

Mix Group A together in a large bowl.

Note the scale on the left for measuring.

Mix Group B in a metal mixing bowl and warm it via double-boiling.

We’ll be mixing the eggs and milk together in a metal bowl and then warming it up to roughly the temperature of your skin via double-boiling. Double-boiling is a technique to heat things up indirectly to avoid burning or under-cooking. It’s simply placing a metal bowl into a larger bowl/pot of hot water, as seen in the show:

Double-boiling Group B

In this case, since we’re just warming Group B, we don’t need actual boiling water. Simply placing the bowl in a pot of hot water (roughly the temperature of a hot bath) is fine.

In my case, I don’t actually have a larger bowl, so I’m just using a pot filled with hot water and placing my mixing bowl over the pot. There’s just enough hot water so that the mixing bowl floats a little (the pot is almost full).

Double-boiling Group B

Mix Group A and B together thoroughly.

Mix Group A and B

Knead the dough with the butter for 8min.

Prepare a working surface with some parchment paper and dust it and your hands with some flour. This is to prevent the dough from sticking to the surface and to your hands.

This is gonna be messy no matter what. Flour is gonna get everywhere.

Place the dough on your dusted surface and start kneading. Knead the room-temperature butter into the dough as you work.

Start kneading

Keep kneading for 8min. Maybe get your daughter to help.

Yes it is.

Once you’re done, try to stretch out the dough with your fingers. If you can make a thin film without tearing it, it’s ready!

Knead check

Place the dough in an oiled metal mixing bowl and let rise for an hour (first rise).

Coat your metal mixing bowl with oil and place the dough into it. Cover it with some plastic wrap.

Just like before, we’ll be warming the dough in a double-boiler. Again, the water doesn’t need to be actually boiling, just hot like a hot bath.

First rise

Let the whole thing sit and rise for an hour. This is known as the “first rise” or letting the dough become “ripe”. Go off and clean your student’s kitchen or something while you wait.

Once the hour is up, check if the dough is ready by poking it with your finger. If the hole stays there after you take your finger out, it’s ready to go. Otherwise, just let it rise for longer.

First rise check

…and we’re good!

Press the dough down and then divide into 8 balls. Cover and let sit for 15min.

Flatten the dough to expel any gas.

Divide the dough into 8 parts and roll them into balls.

Cover the balls with a damp cloth (I just used damp paper towels) and let sit for 15min.

Dough balls

Push down the balls and form rings. Cover and let rise for another hour (second rise).

Push down the dough balls and create a ring in the dough. Make sure that the hole is larger than you would expect for a doughnut (because the dough will expand).

Making the actual doughnuts

Cover the doughnuts with some plastic wrap and let rise for another hour in some warm place. This is known as the “second rise” or “proofing”.

This is probably a good time to go to your local game center and bond with your daughter.

Obviously, pick “Cute”.

Once the hour is up, check if the dough is ready by pressing the dough. If it slowly returns to its original shape, it’s ready. Otherwise, let it rise for a bit longer.

Make glazes for finishing the doughnuts.

After the second rise and you’re done bonding with your daughter and before frying, spend a few minutes making glazes to finish the doughnuts.

(This is also a good time to start heating the frying oil as you’re making the glazes, just watch the temperature!)

Rather than make the honey sugar glaze and melted chocolate like in the episode, I chose instead to make matcha green tea and mocha glazes instead. Feel free to finish with whatever sounds tasty. Plain? Dusted with powdered sugar? Coated with chocolate or white chocolate? Sugar/fruit/whatever glaze? There are so many possibilities!

The matcha glaze is simple, just whisk together the ingredients until smooth.

Matcha glaze

The mocha glaze involves mixing the chocolate, sugar, and salt together. Then in a small pan, mixing the heavy cream and instant coffee/espresso and bringing to a boil. Pour this coffee cream mixture over the chocolate mixture and let it sit for 2min. Then whisk it all together until smooth.

Mocha glaze

Fry doughnuts on each side for 1.5min.

Fill your work (or dutch oven or fryer) with a neutral, frying oil (vegetable oil in my case) and heat it up. So as not to repeat the mistakes made in the anime, use a kitchen thermometer to make sure that the frying oil is at 170-180C (338-356F) and then turn the heat to low.

Use a thermometer!

Take doughnuts and fry them on each side for about 1.5min. As always when frying, exercise caution since scalding oil will pop and fly everywhere. Take it slow and it’ll be fine.

Frying the doughnuts

Pat the doughnuts dry with some paper towels and let cool slightly before finishing via glazing.

Dip doughnuts in glazes and let cool. Enjoy!

Dip the freshly fried doughnuts into your glazes and then let sit on a rack to let the excess glaze drip off. In my case, I didn’t have a rack, so I just let the doughnuts sit in a pan and wiped off the excess glaze with a paper towel.

Glazing the doughnuts

Let the glaze harden for about 5min (or just go ahead and eat, whatever) and then enjoy!

Letting the glaze harden

Doughnuts!

Definitely try leaving one of the doughnuts plain just to see what it tastes like.

On a personal note, I did this in the evening which means I ate like 5 doughnuts for dinner.

Thoughts after finishing:

After doing all of this, man, I have a new appreciation for doughnuts just in terms of the effort needed to make one.

Also, a cup of glaze is way too much. I think even if I glazed all 8 doughnuts with one glaze, 1 cup is more than I need.

On a similar note, my doughnuts ended up less airy than I expected. maybe I didn’t let the dough rise enough?

90s per side might be a bit too long, especially since I’m actually juggling 4 doughnuts at a time while frying. The doughnuts ended up being darker than I expected. Maybe just 60s or even shorter?

My matcha glaze had some lumps/dots… it’s probably because I tried to let the hot water do all the work. What I probably should have done was to mix in the matcha using a mesh strainer to prevent this.