Mini Doughnuts Using A Combo Mini Doughnuts Machine!

Doughnuts are a traditional Hanukkah treat, though I've always wanted to bake some rather than serve my family the oil laden traditional fried ones. And this year, ta da, we made a whole bunch of mini baked doughnuts thanks to a Bat Mitzvah gift certificate that my daughter finally redeemed (a year plus later) at a department store on our trip to Tiberius. To my great surprise, the only thing that we found in the whole store that was really worth the 250 shekel gift certificate was a combination waffle iron, cake pops, cupcakes and mini doughnut maker!  And just in time for Hanukkah too, so I guess it was just meant to be. My daughter actually made a ton of these but we were so rushed that I hid about five of them to photograph after the houseful of guests left and I could find time to take some photos!

After some research on the internet, I saw that cake pop machines have been very popular for some time, but I only recently realized that they existed when I saw one in my local electronics store. A whole gadget just for cake pops might have attracted my attention, but a gadget that you can use to make a range of things, now that makes a lot of sense, don't you think? And these little machines are great for kids who want to dabble in the kitchen……yes one can still get burned, but it is a lot safer I would think than turning on an oven. We looked for a recipe that was for mini doughnuts made in a similar machine, and the one that we found ended up being a bit on the dry side, so I now present to you, our mini doughnut machine doughnut recipe.

Ingredients:

Makes about 28 mini doughnuts

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/3 cup water
• spray oil
• For topping: white chocolate melts, dark chocolate bars, a variety of sprinkles

Preparation:

1. Combine sugar, oil, eggs, vanilla and water, and beat. (If you prefer a fluffier result you can separate the eggs and fold in the whipped whites at the end, but we didn't bother.) Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl (honestly we just added them to the first bowl, but that isn't proper baking etiquette, so be it!) and then add to wet ingredients.
2. Plug in machine, and when green light is on, spray pan with oil, and start filling the tray with batter. We used a large plastic bottle with a nozzle, often used for pancakes, which worked really well, though you can also use a piping bag. Filling the little mini doughnut spaces with the batter would be very time consuming and messy done with a spoon, but certainly can be done.
3. Bake for 6 minutes and carefully remove mini doughnuts and set aside to cool. Continue making more doughnuts until all the batter is used up.
4. Melt chocolate for topping, dip doughnuts into melted chocolate and then sprinkle your favorite decorations on top. The results are just too adorable! We served these with ice cream for dessert on Shabbat, and they also would look great as part of a dessert bar.

We will certainly be making these again, yes, quite a bit more work than making regular cake, but they're just too much fun and my daughter is more than happy to do the work! Next on the list, cake pops, we'll let you know how it goes, and I'm thinking they would be perfect little treats to make for Purim, right?

Note: So far we are happy with the purchase of our combo appliance, though the waffles did seem to take much longer to bake than I remember using a traditional heavy duty waffle maker. So if waffles are something you'd make regularly, get a large sized waffle maker, that in any case will make more than one round waffle.