Baked Buttermilk Whole Wheat Donuts with Strawberry Rhubarb Brown Butter Glaze

This recipe is a modified version of one Jill found on Adventures in Cooking by Eva Kosmas Flores via the Huffington Post. I added White Whole Wheat flour and, of course, made the necessary substitutions to make it vegan. I also changed the shape to something I could make by hand as I do not own a donut pan and doubt I ever will.

You will also need to know how to make vegan buttermilk. You can learn how in my post about Whole Wheat Biscuits.

Ingredients:

For the donuts:

-2 C All Purpose Flour

-1 C White Whole Wheat Flour

-½ C granulated sugar

-1 Tbs+½ tsp yeast

-½ tsp salt

-5 Tbs “brown vegan butter,” instructions below

-½ tsp vanilla extract

-1 “egg,” instructions below

-1 C vegan buttermilk (find instructions here)

For the glaze:

-3 Tbs brown vegan butter

-1 C strawberries, tops removed and berries quartered

-1 C rhubarb

-¼ C full-fat coconut milk (I highly recommend Geisha brand)

-¾ C confectioner’s sugar

Frothing

First, as promised above, a brief description on how to make “brown butter.”

-heat a clear bottomed saucepan on Med-Lo/ Med heat (clear bottomed so you can see when it is getting brown)

-add butter, in tablespoon-sized chunks

-stirring with great regularity, allow the butter to evolve through three stages:

-> melting

-> frothing

-> browning

-when it reaches the browning stage, remove from heat, pour into a bowl, and let cool.

In terms of the egg, PETA’s website (I am NOT a member of PETA by the way, so please don’t think because I cite them as a resource I agree with all of their political beliefs) has a great page about vegan egg substitutions. I almost invariably use Ener-G Egg Replacer, 1 ½ tsp mixed well with 2 Tbs hot water equals one egg.

To make the donuts:

1. Mix flours, sugar, yeast, and salt in a large bowl; or if you are lucky like I am, the bowl of your standing mixer with the bread hook attachment.

2. Slowly stir in browned butter, then continue to stir for 2 minutes.

3. Stir in vanilla, vegan buttermilk, and “egg.” Knead well or kick your standing mixer up to medium and run for another 5 min, knocking the dough off the hook if it gets stuck.

4. Cover bowl with a moist cloth, and let rise for 1-1 ½ hr.

(At this point, I recommend starting in on the glaze while the dough is rising)

5. Preheat oven to 350 F.

6. Cover a large baking sheet with a piece of parchment paper. Turn dough onto a lighlty floured surface. Punch down dough and divide into 8-12 pieces. Roll the dough chunks into snakes with your well-floured hands. Fold the snake in half and twist two or three times. Place the twisted snakes onto baking pan.

7. Bake donuts for only 10-12 minutes. Put on a wire rack and allow to cool COMPLETELY (no matter how much your girlfriend begs you to let her try one) (He lies, they were DELICIOUS warm!)

Twisty snakes... pretty sure that's not the real name for
pastries of this shape, but whatever.

8. Dip in glaze, allow glaze to adhere a bit. Serve or store.

To make the glaze:

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Put strawberries and rhubarb in a greased pan. (I used coconut oil to grease the pan) Bake fruit for 20 min.

Raw fruit.

2. Put brown butter in bottom of food processor. Add fruit. Puree.

Cooked fruit.

3. Allow to cool in refrigerator while dough is rising, at least 15 minutes.

4. When donuts are ready, whisk confectioner’s sugar into glaze.

And after a long day in the kitchen, this is the result.