Apple Cinnamon Baked Doughnuts

This past weekend, in order to celebrate the fact that we now officially own our condo, Dan and I invited some friends over for a housewarming brunch. Dan was in charge of the eggs and bacon, and I tried my hand at doughnuts.

Doughnuts are usually fried, right? That's a problem, because not only do I not own a fryer, I'm also trying to watch my girlish figure so that I can properly wreck it over Thanksgiving. So, what to do, what to do. Pass on the doughnuts and serve a fruit salad instead? Nahhhh. Enter Google search for "baked doughnut recipes."

Surprisingly, there were tons of recipes online for baked doughnuts. Most of them were just made of flour, sugar, baking powder and butter -- presumably, they produced cake-y doughnuts. That's not what I was looking for. I wanted to make Krispy Kreme-esque doughnuts: light and pillowy, more sweet bread than cake, and 101 Cookbooks had a recipe that seemed to fit the bill.

I didn't have doughnut pans or cookie cutters, but it turns out that cups and shot-glasses are perfect for cutting out perfectly round doughnuts and adorable little doughnut holes. Take that, Williams-Sonoma, with your ridiculously enticing product emails...

These doughnuts turned out to be a huge pain in the ass (recipes that involve yeast always are), but were totally worth it. Super light and chewy, and oh-so-delicious dusted with cinnamon sugar. Perfect served with a dollop or two of fresh whipped cream.

Recipe for these baked doughnuts can be found here, with one slight modification: I wanted a slight apple flavor, so I substituted a 1/2 cup of the milk for about 1 cup of apple sauce. Unfortunately, the doughnuts turned out to be less apple-y than I would have liked. Next time I'm going to try using more apple sauce, or substituting apple butter or some other form of cooked apple.