Mini Jam Doughnuts

The last few weeks have been somewhat eventful, and while I have been keeping up with cooking, I have again neglected writing about it. I needed something to shake me out of this non-blogging phase, so I made proper jam doughnuts, something I have always wanted to try.
The deep frying makes the recipe sound complicated, but they are not really that hard. If you keep them small you don't have to worry about overcooking the outside and still having a raw-dough middle. If you don't want to faff about with putting the jam inside you could even just make plain doughnuts. I actually enjoy the process of making mini packages, finding the almost mindless work of filling and shaping relaxing. But maybe that's just me.
I uses Nigella's recipe, as is often my way. I did change it slightly, switching raspberry jam for strawberry (far superior, in my opinion), and adding a little nutmeg and cinnamon to the sugar.
One note- the amount of jam sounds tiny, like me, I am sure you will be tempted to add more. Any extra will make it impossible to close the dough around the jam and you'll end up frustrated (and sticky).

Ingredients
125ml milk
15g unsalted butter
250g bread flour
1/2 packet (1 1/2 teaspoons) easy blend or instant yeast
1/4 teaspoon salt

225g caster sugar
pinch ground nutmeg
1 egg
2 tablespoons raspberry jam
vegetable oil for deep-frying


Method
Warm the milk and butter together in a saucepan, taking it off the heat when the butter is melting. Put the flour, yeast, salt and 25g of the sugar in a bowl. Beat the egg into the warmed milk and butter and pour this into your bowl of dry ingredients, mixing it with a wooden spoon.

Either using your hands, or a dough-hook of a freestanding mixer, knead the dough until it is smooth and silky.Pat the dough into a round ball and put into a buttered bowl, covered in clingfilm and leave to rise somewhere warm, it should double in size and this could take 1-2 hours.

When it gets to that stage, punch the dough down and kneed again to make the dough smooth. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to a 2cm thickness and cut out circles with a 4cm round cutter. You can re-roll the dough to make more circles. Make the dough circles into flatter rounds in your hands and then put an 1/8 teaspoon jam in the centre and fold in half and carefully roll it back into a a round ball shape. Sit the doughnuts on a baking sheet as you make the rest. Alternatively, you can do what I did and divide the dough into 16 pieces (halved 4 times), and using your palms, shape into a circle about 5cm. Add the jam, and gather up the edges to seal. Keep pinching the dough to make a smoothish sphere.








Heat the oil in a deep fat fryer or saucepan.If you're using a pan, the depth of oil should be about 3-4cm. Cook them in batches of 4-5 at a time, on a low heat. Each batch should take around 3 minutes, turn them over halfway.

While the first lot are cooking, mix the sugar and nutmeg on a plate. As soon as they are cooked, roll them in the spiced sugar and transfer to a plate or mouth.