Passionfruit Donuts
Confession: I often get sick of eating my own baked goods, but I still LOVE these donuts.
The recipe
Yield: 16 donuts
Time: about 4 hours
Ingredients
Donuts:
1 stick (113 g or ½ c) salted butter
4 and ½ c (532 g) all-purpose flour
¼ c (53 g) sugar
½ tsp (4 g) salt
2 tsp (7 g) instant yeast
2 eggs
1 c (260 g) milk
1 tsp (5 g) vanilla extract
Filling:
1 and ¼ c (265 g) sugar
4 tbsp (40 g) cornstarch
1 c (240 g) passionfruit juice
½ c (120 g) water
5 egg yolks
4 tbsp (57 g) butter, either salted or unsalted
Glaze:
2 and ½ c (313 g) powdered sugar
5 tbsp (82 g) milk
½ tsp (3 g) vanilla extract
Instructions
Donuts:
1. Melt the butter in the microwave just until liquid and set aside.
2. Add the flour and sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment.
3. Add the salt to one side of the mixing bowl and the yeast to the other.
4. Add the eggs to the bowl.
5. Check the temperature of the melted butter. It should feel warm but not hot (100–115°F if using a thermometer). If it’s too warm, add a splash of milk to bring it down to temperature.
6. Heat the remaining milk in the microwave until it’s warm but not hot (also 100–115°F).
7. Add the butter, milk, and vanilla extract to the dough and mix on low speed until it comes together, scraping down the sides and bottom once or twice.
8. Increase the speed to medium and mix until the dough pulls away from the sides and bottom of the mixer onto the dough hook (8–10 mins). When you stretch it, you should be able to see light coming through the dough before it tears. See the picture below.
9. Place the dough in an oiled 8x8 pan or a large bowl, cover it, and leave it to rise until doubled, about an hour.
Filling:
1. While the dough is rising, make the filling. Add the sugar and cornstarch to a small pot and stir to combine.
2. Add the passionfruit juice, water, and egg yolks, whisking gently to combine.
3. Set the pot over medium heat, whisking constantly, until it thickens and boils.
4. Allow the filling to boil for one minute, then remove it from the heat and whisk in the butter until it melts.
5. Press a piece of plastic wrap to the surface of the filling so it doesn’t form a skin and refrigerate until time to fill the donuts.
Donuts:
1. When the dough has doubled in size, lightly flour a section of countertop and your hands.
2. Gently punch down the dough to deflate it, fold it in half, then turn it out onto the counter.
3. Stretch the dough into a 10-inch square. (If it resists, let it rest, covered, for 10 minutes and shape again.) Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife coated with flour, cut the dough into 16 even squares.
4. Place the donuts on individual squares of parchment paper and cover them with greased plastic wrap.
5. Leave the donuts to rise until they are about doubled in size, and when pressed gently with a finger, the dough slowly springs back halfway, about an hour.
6. When the donuts have risen for 30 minutes, heat 6 cups of oil in a Dutch oven or large pot to 365°F. Adjust the heat as needed to keep the oil at that temperature. (I had to keep mine around medium-low.)
7. While the oil is heating, mix the glaze ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.
8. Three things are going to happen at once when the donuts are ready: you’ll fry them, you’ll adjust the oil to keep it within a certain temperature range, and you’ll pause a few times during frying to glaze the hot donuts. The glaze won’t stick as well if you wait until they’ve cooled. I know. It’s a lot, but you can do this!
9. When the donuts are ready, very gently drop them into the oil, 2–3 at a time, depending on the size of your pot.
10. Fry for 45 seconds to 1 minute per side, until golden brown, then let excess oil drip off before setting atop a wire rack to cool.
11. Keep the oil between 360°F and 370°F. Take a break between donut batches if needed to let it warm up before dropping the next batch in (every time you add donuts, it brings the temperature down by a few degrees).
12. Once the donuts are just cool enough to touch, dunk them in the glaze, shake off the excess, then place back on the wire rack to set. You’ll have to pause during frying to do this. The first donuts will be cool before the final ones are done.
13. When the donuts are fully cool, use a frosting bag and a tip to fill them with the passionfruit filling.
14. Enjoy the same day they’re made. (If you really can’t finish them all, put them in the freezer, but know they’ll lose their crisp exterior.)
Notes and tips
I use pure frozen passionfruit juice for these. Don’t substitute something like a juice cocktail—the flavor won’t be strong enough.
I made this dough by hand once, but it’s very sticky, so I recommend the mixer.
Leftover frying oil can be saved and used for cooking. Now is the time to try your hand at fish tacos or fried chicken!
If you put the dough in an 8x8 pan, it should fill it halfway. Once the dough reaches the top of the pan, you know it’s doubled in size. The square shape also helps get evenly sized donuts.
Usually salted butter is important to keep things from being too sweet, but the tartness of the passionfruit juice does that here, so use unsalted if you wish.
For some more tips, check out the notes section of my Yeasted Apple Cider Donuts recipe.
Use the leftover egg whites to make Pavlova.
The story
By the fifth or sixth time I make a recipe, I no longer want anything to do with it. I don’t want to taste it, I don’t want to bake it, and I really don’t want to wash the dishes. I was so sick of pumpkin roll that I woke up with nightmares the week before Thanksgiving, sure it wouldn’t live up to the hype. It’s January, and I haven’t touched the extra molasses cookies I stashed in the freezer for Christmas. And this summer, when I spent an entire three months developing chocolate cake? My friends get all starry-eyed when they remember it (“I was hoping you’d never perfect the recipe,” one of them confided to me), but by August I hated even the scent of chocolate.
When I made apple cider donuts, though, things were different. The entire two-and-a-half-week process was glorious. I bounded into the kitchen every morning, excited about kneading dough, getting my hands covered in flour, and burning my fingers while glazing donuts that were still a little too hot. I didn’t complain about dishes once (a rarity; I gripe about them almost daily). On the days I wasn’t frying, donuts appeared in my dreams. Literally. Something about fresh, fluffy dough covered in a crackly glaze is addictive. Maybe it’s because they were so much better than anything I’d had at Dunkin’ or even Krispy Kreme. Ninety percent of the goodness of a donut is in how fresh it is—that crisply fried exterior and soft, tender middle last only a day. But I’d been able to enjoy them at peak freshness multiple times a week. That was real luxury. And when I finished the cider donuts, I wasn’t ready to move on to something different—I wanted more of them. My friends did, too, the frying oil was still good, and I decided to develop a second donut recipe immediately after the first.
I planned to fill them with passionfruit curd. I’d made an enormous batch of it after finding myself left with fifteen naked egg yolks after developing BC’s birthday pavlova last year. The curd was easy to make and delicious, and I’ve been looking for a chance to scale the recipe down to normal proportions ever since.
Unfortunately, passionfruit curd and donuts didn’t mix as well as I’d hoped. Curd is too thin to be a good filling—it kept oozing out of the top of my frosting bag as I tried to squeeze it in. I only got the donuts half full, and the most disappointing thing in the world is an under-filled donut. This was not up to my standards. I’d have to bake another round. What an absolute tragedy.
I tried a different tack: lemon pie filling, but with passionfruit juice instead. The filling was nice and firm when set—too firm, actually. So firm that filling the donuts required a lot of physical effort. So firm I split two frosting bags and needed BC to massage my aching palms when I was done. Well. I guess I’d have to make more donuts.
I tried a passionfruit version of a classic lemon donut filling next, and the texture was finally right. It was much easier to work with, and I was able to generously fill them this time. But it didn’t taste good. There was too little butter, too much cornstarch, and not enough passionfruit. It tasted like something you’d get out of a can, not like something homemade. Another round of donuts it was!
In the next batch of filling, I added more butter for richness and extra passionfruit juice for flavor, reducing the amount of cornstarch and adding extra egg yolks so it would set. Everything worked. Texture and taste were spot-on, and it was easy to pipe. I asked my Bible study to taste test different finishes for the donuts (sugar-coated, plain, and glazed), and we all agreed that the glazed were best. I took beautiful pictures. I typed up the recipe. I was done. There were no more variables to tweak, no processes to perfect, no more excuses for frying donuts. It had been a dreamy month, but it was time to bake something else, and I was sad.
I glumly washed the cooling rack for the last time and thought about my friend Jay’s upcoming birthday. He was coming over for a visit for the first time in a long while. During the past few weeks, whenever BC raved about how delicious the donuts were, Jay mournfully listed all the commitments that kept him from hopping on the train and coming down to taste test. I’d already promised to bake him a birthday dessert, and I usually did some kind of cake. But nothing said it had to be cake again this year. We could get creative.
I smiled. I knew exactly what he was going to ask me for.
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