This week, I have been having a bit of a rough one, and I must admit I was getting dangerously close to not baking or cooking anything for the blog because I’ve been so exhausted. My mum told me I should just leave it for the week with so much other stuff going on. But then I thought about it, and decided that I knew the perfect remedy for stress! As you know, the one thing I love doing when I’m stressed is baking, it just makes me feel so relaxed. I love the feeling of making something special out of a few ingredients, and that feeling of accomplishing something always helps with the stress.

A few things put the idea for this weeks baking into my mind. Firstly, for all of you who live in Brisbane, there is an amazing gluten free doughnut company called nodo donuts. Absolutely amazing and delicious guilt free doughnuts, if you are ever in the mood. Anyway, they have decided to open up a store, and the store happens to be really close to my work, which will mean I will have a lot of trouble not eating doughnuts every week (not the worst problem to have, I know). But it is also opening up on 1 Ella Street, which I take as a sign from a higher power that I should be eating more doughnuts! Seems legit.

Someone in my house also must have happened to purchase a mould for baking doughnuts, which has magically appeared in our drawer in the kitchen. I haven’t seen any doughnuts made using this mould yet, so I figured it was about time we broke it in! Having a doughnut mould means that you can bake your doughnuts instead of frying them, instantly making them healthier. It is the perfect way to cook doughnuts with special ingredients in them, such as making them gluten free or paleo. It really opens up the doughnut making to a whole new range of doughnuts! And as much as I am quite partial to a delicious deep fried doughnut, sometimes it’s nice to try healthy alternatives. Especially coming up to swim suit season in Australia!

I had a look for gluten free recipes for doughnuts, and surprisingly there are quite a few online, with so many variations it was hard to decide which one to try first. But I decided on a recipe for paleo almond doughnuts, because it seemed pretty simple and it used all natural ingredients. However, it didn’t have a recipe for a glaze, which I think is a necessity for any type of doughnut (except for cinnamon sugar, you can’t improve a classic). So I found another recipe for a salted caramel glaze that sounded amazing, and was also completely natural. And then in true Ella style I added dark chocolate, because I am absolutely obsessed with chocolate. I mean, you can’t be too healthy! And dark chocolate is good for you anyway. So I guess if you want it to be free of chocolate, you can easily remove it, but I wouldn’t personally, because they were really delicious doughnuts!

This recipe ended up being a little more complicated than I originally anticipated, but that’s ok because the results were absolutely delicious! I was surprised at how sweet they were given the lack of sugar in them, so I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about eating them. My only issue was that my doughnut mould and the recipe only made 6 doughnuts, which meant that they were gone really quickly. I think I might need to get more moulds to ensure I can make more, because I really want to try these again, and maybe try some other interesting flavours! It’s cool because once you’ve got your base doughnut, you can add whatever you want to it.

Chocolate Chip Doughnuts with a Salted Caramel Glaze

Adapted From	Southern In Law (Doughnuts) and NoDo Donuts (Glaze)
Preparation Time	30 minutes (including assembly)
Cooking Time	20 minutes
Serves	6 doughnuts
Ingredients Chocolate Chip Doughnuts ·         1 cup of Almond Meal ·         3 tablespoons of Honey ·         2 large Eggs ·         2 teaspoons of Vanilla Extract ·         ¼ teaspoon of Baking Soda ·         500 grams of good quality Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel Glaze ·         ¼ cup of Coconut Sugar ·         2 tablespoons of Water ·         270ml of Coconut Cream Directions Chocolate Chip Doughnuts 1.      Preheat your oven to 150 degrees Celcius (300 Degrees Fahrenheit). 2.      Grease the doughnut mould with coconut oil and set aside. You could use something else to grease it if you wanted, but I found this worked quite well. 3.      In a medium sized mixing bowl, mix together all ingredients until smooth. You don’t really need an electric mixer for this, a wooden spoon worked perfectly fine for me! 4.      Roughly break the chocolate up and fold into the mixture. 5.      Fill the doughnut moulds with the mixture, filling each about half way full 6.      Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Mine took about 20 minutes to get completely cooked 7.      Take out of the oven and allow the doughnuts to cool completely before removing from the moulds. Place on a wire rack with a plate underneath. Salted Caramel Glaze 1.      Add the coconut sugar and water to a saucepan and let simmer for 2-4 minutes until a golden caramel colour. Make sure you stir constantly to avoid burning. 2.      Add the coconut cream and a pinch of salt, and allow to simmer until the mixture reduces. Ensure you keep stirring the mixture to avoid sticking. This should take about 5-8 minutes, at which point the mixture should have reduced by half and thickened enough to coat your spoon. 3.      Allow the Glaze to cool for a few minutes and bring over to your doughnuts on the wire rack. Using a spoon, cover the doughnuts completely with the glaze, ensuring all edges are covered. 4.      To garnish, shave some dark chocolate and sprinkle over the top. 5.      Refrigerate the doughnuts until ready to serve.

These doughnuts were absolutely delicious and I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty for eating them. I only wish there had been more! Next time I think I will make a double batch. I took these over to a friend’s place for dessert and her boyfriend demolished three of them in under 5 minutes. Given they were quite healthy I take this as a sign that they were really delicious.

The doughnuts ended up having a great texture, and I loved having the chocolate through them to break them up, like a delicious chocolate chip cookie! The glaze was surprisingly sweet for using coconut sugar, but not too sweet. It was the perfect balance of flavours with the salted caramel and almond honey flavours.

You could make these doughnuts with any flavours you wanted. I think blueberries or raspberries would also be delicious in these instead of the chocolate, or maybe even in addition! Go nuts!

Until next time, happy baking

Ella xx