Making donuts at home is at the top of the list of things that I know people rarely go out of their way to do—but if I could convince you to do one thing this fall it would be to make these donuts. The ones you can buy at the farmers market and apple orchards are good, don’t get me wrong. But these are better, incomparably better.
Cake style donuts stumped me for a long time, I could never seem to get the texture or flavor right. They were either too crumbly and dry or too airy and soaked up excessive amounts of oil. A majority of the recipes I tested called for cake flour, but the finished product always lacked structure and the crumb lacked body. I finally cracked the code and created a perfect apple cider donut, the answer was to create a well hydrated dough with lots of sour cream, apple butter and apple cider, but regular all purpose flour for structure. The result was a moist and cakey, almost melt in your mouth textured donut packed with apple flavor.
This recipe does require an overnight rest in the fridge in order for the dough to hold its shape well when being rolled out and cut. And do make sure you have a thermometer for your oil, as long as the oil is at the correct temp your donuts will fry up like a dream.
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