Easy Gourmet Donuts at Home for Just $5

So you're gonna learn how to make gourmet donuts for a fraction of the price. We're gonna start out with a yeasted dough, this is a really easy one, it's light and fluffy, has a little bit of vanilla in it, and they fry up so beautifully. So to start out we're gonna use some all-purpose flour. For donuts I never tend to use strong flour even though it's yeasted dough because you want, you don't want a chewy donut, nobody wants that. You want something that just like almost dissolves in your mouth and it's really soft crumb and that's what all-purpose flour gives you. That all-purpose flour is 49 cents. So we're off to a great start. Next we are going to add in some sugar. Sugar helps our yeast and sweetens our dough, that is 10 cents. Yeast loves sugar so when it reaches that it'll thrive and feed off it. Salt, less than a cent, only a tiny amount. And then here I have my yeast, I use instant yeast not active dried yeast. This is only 10 cents and 10 cents because I buy a big bag of yeast. If you buy the sachets I will let you know it will be more expensive, it can be around 70 cents for this amount, but if you buy it in bulk or in a bigger jar it'll be cheaper. But for me that was 10 cents. So all these prices are based on big supermarkets here in the U.S. like Walmart, Albertsons, Ralph's, Safeway. So if you shop there you'll get the same prices as us. So those are our dry ingredients. So here I have our wet, I've got some lukewarm milk and we warm it up because yeast thrives in warmth. So it helps it just proof so much faster. So that is 15 cents of milk. We have water, which is zero. I mean we all have to pay water fees but you know what I mean. So I have a little bit of butter here which enriches the dough and that's 54 cents. A little bit on the pricier side but worth it. Some people put in large in their doughnuts so that's way cheaper. The quality of butter is so much better. Now here we have a smidgey smidge of vanilla. Now I cut down the amount of vanilla in this recipe because it was almost 80 cents. So this one teaspoon is 48 cents. Now this is vanilla extract and it's good quality so it is a bit of a pricier ingredient. If you're trying to keep the price really low, leave it out. I do know that vanilla essence is way cheaper but it's not as good quality so I'll leave that one up to you. Okie dokie, here we go. Turn on your machine. You can also do this by hand. Just mix together those dry ingredients first. Let them get combined and then we're going to add in our liquid. When making doughs, I usually have my machine on a medium speed. Medium to high, it depends. Depends on the dough. There we go. You can see it coming together. I usually leave it kind of slow for the beginning until it comes together for around, you know, a minute or two. When making any type of a dough, just hold back a little bit of liquid. See if you need it all. Everybody's flour is different. Everybody's ingredients are different. You don't want to end up with a dough that's too wet. I didn't use a small amount and our dough came together. So I'm going to let this knead now on a medium speed. Medium high, depending on your machine, for around six to eight minutes. You'll notice the dough tighten, become smoother and form more of a ball. If you're doing this by hand, it's totally possible. Put it on your countertop, but you will need to give it a good bit of welly. Definitely kneading for around 10 minutes to strengthen that gluten. Okie dokie. So it's been kneading for a while. It's a bit of a softer dough as you can see, but you will notice that it tightens and comes together and really what it should do. It's not a soggy dough. It's just a bit of a sticky dough. Just like that. So here I have a bowl that's been lightly oiled. I'm going to pop my dough in there and we are going to cover it in cling wrap like so. Make a nice little bed for it like we do with all of our, feels like, millions of doughs now that I've made on Bigger Bolder Baking. And of course, top it with a kitty cat towel. So that is our doughnut dough. Really easy to make, did not take long and guess what? This dough that's going to yield us around 15 doughnuts cost $1.86. So we are already ahead of the game. So what you want to do right now is set this over to the side and let it proof at room temperature for around an hour and a half to two hours or until it has doubled in size. So our dough has proofed. It's looking very lovely and nice and puffy. That's why I love working with bread doughs. Look at that. Look at how happy that makes me. Lovely. A little bit of flour on your surface. Sometimes I say be very careful with flour on your surface, but for a doughnut dough, we need that flour. When you're rolling bread rolls and things like that, it can be much harder. Here's what we want to do. A little bit of flour on a rolling pin and roll your dough out to around half an inch thick. It might pull back a little bit, that can happen. It's a yeasted dough. Here I have my trusted ruler. Nearly every episode of Bigger Bolder Baking, I have to bring out my ruler. Oh, that's half an inch. That's great. Lovely. Just give it a little feely feel around so that it feels a bit thicker. Give it a little zhuzh if you feel like it's a bit thin. Definitely don't go too thin on these guys. So to cut our doughnuts, you do not need to buy one of those doughnut cutters. I mean, those only serve one purpose and I don't buy equipment that only does one job. So here I have a three inch cutter for scones, just whatever, biscuits, whatever it is. And I'm going to cut out as many doughnuts as I can. Cut them close together so you do not lose any dough in between. I got kind of crafty. So here I have a piping nozzle and this is an inch wide. So anything you have that's like that. I do recommend when you're doing something like this, don't ever use a glass cup or a glass cutter or a glass jug or whatever because I've seen that go very badly. So just be very careful of that. And then just cut out that hole in the middle. And you can keep these little guys for doughnut holes. Cut out as many as you can and then place them carefully. You want to be careful with handling yeasted doughs on a tray lined with parchment. Give them a little bit of space. We don't want them to proof into each other. So I would say with the leftover scraps, just kind of fold them over on themselves and you'll be able to get a few more doughnuts, not a lot. So there you go. I got around 14 doughnuts. You have a little bit left over. You probably could have gotten a 15th one. I don't like to do too many re-rolling. And then I put our little doughnut holes on a separate tray because they proof much faster. The doughnuts will take around 20 to 30 minutes to proof in a regular kitchen. And if your kitchen is very warm, they might proof faster. What you're going to want to do is just cover them up. Dough doesn't like to get the air directly on it or it can form a skin and then it won't proof. So you want to keep them nice and warm and snug from the air. There we go again with my towel. There we go. And then one for you. Boopie boop. They don't take long, so I'm not going to go too far. We'll come back in a little bit and check on them. I want to show you what they look like when they're proofed and ready to be fried. So it's been around half an hour. And as you can see, our little doughnut holes are all poofy and soft and have rounded. And then here are doughnuts. You always know when they're done because the cut side will soften and they will be nice and have rounded edges just like this. You don't want to go over half an hour because they really don't need it and then they can over proof. These are looking fantastic. Like I said, they're nice and rounded. This is how we know that they are proofed and ready to go. So I've got my pot of oil on over here. Follow me over and let's start to cook these off. So when you're frying doughnuts at home, definitely have your heat on like a medium low and let it heat up for a few minutes, like five, six, seven minutes. All we want to do is get that constant like medium heat. If your oil is too hot, they will burn on the outside and be raw in the middle. If it's too low, they will sit in the dough and soak up the oil and it will not be nice to eat those doughnuts. So you can use a thermometer if you want. I don't always use a thermometer. If you were, you're looking at around 325 to 350 degrees. There's also, I won't use this because this is George's favorite. You can also do the wooden spoon test, which is if when you put it in, starts to bubble around the handle like so, that means it's ready. Or what I like to do just as a good test is sacrifice a little doughnut hole, sizzles up, should take two minutes to brown on one side. If he browns too fast, the oil is too hot. And remember, the more you add into the pan, the lower the temperature of the oil. So you do want to make sure it's at that right temperature. Looking good. Turn him over on the other side. Look at his little guy. He's adorable. I always recommend a heavy bottom saucepan when frying at home. I feel they're just safer and they conduct heat better. And if you are a kid watching this, definitely get help of an adult. So this guy is a lovely golden brown all over. He did around two minutes on each side. So that's like the perfect timing for a doughnut. So I'm going to go in, add my big guys in. Carefully after they've proofed. There we go. Three or four to the pan. Two minutes on one side. They get nice and puffy, flip them over when they're nice and golden brown. So for my oil, I use vegetable oil. I think it's the best for frying and a little bit better for you. I said two and a half cups, which ended up being one dollar and 60 cents. So, you know, the oil is a factor like that's a bit more expensive, but, you know, it's a little less than the price of the whole dough. But you can filter it at the end and use it again. So it's not just one use. These are looking great. Delighted. Take out your doughnuts when they're done and lay them carefully. Use a spider or tongs or something and put them on a tray that has a rack on it so they can drain any excess oil off just like that. As they cool, continue to cook off the rest of your doughnuts. If you feel like they're getting too brown, then maybe just check the temperature and turn down the heat. Try not to mess with the heat too much so it doesn't fluctuate too quickly. These are looking good. Two minutes on each side should do it. That's it. I turned off my pan. So here I have my lovely doughnuts and this is the best part of the video. We're truly going to make them gourmet doughnuts. Follow me over here and I'm going to show you what crazy toppings we're going to put on these to take them to the next level. So for the decoration, I made some frosting and that cost me a dollar and two cents. So let's start out with some classics. I'm going to dip my doughnut into vanilla glaze and add sprinkles over a half. I'm going to use my white icing again, dunk in my doughnut and then I am going to dip it into toasted coconut. Get a really lovely coating of coconut there. Now to our white icing, I'm going to turn it pink. So we add a little bit of red food dye into our glaze and then we dip this doughnut into Fruity Pebbles. So you get that sweet, fruity crunchiness on top. So for this guy, this is a doughnut I've seen a lot which is caramel sauce and caramel corn. The ultimate indulgence. And then a little bit more on top. A lovely addition to our crazy tray. So here I'm going to do a chocolate glazed one and this is my vanilla glaze and I just added a tiny bit of cocoa powder. It only cost a few cents to add in the cocoa powder. I'm going to do a few cookie graham cracker crumbs and some marshmallow fluff in the middle. Hey listen, these wouldn't be gourmet doughnuts if we didn't try and toast that s'more. So I took some more of the vanilla icing, the same recipe and I added a tiny drop of ube in there. That is a fancy ingredient but it's not very expensive especially when you're only using a drop. Because ube is special, we're going to really go above and beyond and add a little bit of edible glitter. Ube has a lovely floral flavor so it just really adds something nice to these doughnuts. So the price for the doughnuts including the glazes came to $4.56. So I allowed myself a budget of $1 for my toppings. Now we just need a tiny little bit of each topping to make our 12 doughnuts look awesome. So it really is not going to cost a lot of money. I used what I had in the house, I used a small bit here, a small bit there and I think they really ended up looking great. So here we have it, a box of 12 gourmet insane over-the-top doughnuts that look like they came from a fancy bakery here in Los Angeles that just cost a total of $5.56. That is a fraction of what it could normally cost because here in LA that could be $50. I am thrilled with how these turned out, I love the variety, I love the color, most of all they taste amazing. I hope you enjoyed this new recipe as part of my $5 series. If you want to see more, stick around. I made pizza for $5, I made a birthday cake for $5. Get comfy, I have a lot of content for you to see. Thanks so much and I'll see you back here again really soon.