Fried Angel Biscuit Donuts Recipe on Food52 (2024)

Fry

by: Sarah Coates

June27,2014

4

4 Ratings

  • Makes 10

Jump to Recipe

Author Notes

When canned biscuit dough can produce a donut of passable quality, can you imagine what honest-to-goodness homemade biscuit dough would do? And what if that dough had the best qualities of both a good, buttery biscuit and a yeasted donut? I couldn’t help myself. I had to find out.

I was not disappointed. As soon as the first round hit the oil, I knew I was in for a treat. I could see the layers of dough puffing up into a crispy, tender, yeasty donut. I could smell the butter in the dough sizzling and taking on nutty, caramelized notes. When I cut into one, still-warm, I could see all the flaky layers separated out. It looked like a poor-man’s cronut. And it tasted even better. —Sarah Coates

  • Test Kitchen-Approved

What You'll Need

Ingredients
  • 1 teaspoonactive dry yeast
  • 1 cupwhole milk, at room temperature
  • 2 1/2 cupsall purpose flour
  • 2 1/2 teaspoonsbaking powder
  • 2 tablespoonssugar
  • 1/2 teaspoonsalt
  • 8 tablespoonsbutter, cold
  • Oil, for frying
Directions
  1. Mix the yeast into the room-temperature milk. Set aside while you assemble the rest of the ingredients.
  2. Place all of the dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Mix briefly to combine.
  3. Cut the cold butter into 1/2-inch cubes, and add them to the dry ingredients. Work the mixture on a low speed for about 2 minutes, or until the butter is mostly incorporated into the flour, with some larger flakes of butter still visible. Mix more than you would for traditional biscuits or a pie dough: Most of the butter should be incorporated into the flour.
  4. Add the milk and yeast to the mixer, and mix on a medium speed, just until the mixture starts to cohere and there is no dry flour in the bottom of the bowl.
  5. Dump the mixture out onto a floured surface, and pat and knead it together until it forms a smooth ball. Roll the dough out to about 1/2-inch thickness, and use a doughnut cutter (or a biscuit cutter and a piping nozzle) to cut out as many donuts as you can. With a 3-inch cutter, you should end up with 10 biscuits, re-rolling the dough scraps twice.
  6. Set aside your donuts and donut holes in a cool place for 30 minutes. Unlike traditional yeast baking, you do not want to put this in a warm spot -- that would cause the butter in the biscuits to melt and would make these very tough to work with.
  7. When the donuts have had their 30 minute rest, heat about 2 inches of oil in a wide, deep pan, and bring it up to 350° F (170° C). Alternatively, you can place one of the donut holes into the cold oil. When it turns golden brown, the oil is hot enough to fry in.
  8. Place a few donuts at a time into the hot oil (fewer is best -- you don't want the oil to bubble over). They need about 1 1/2 minutes per side. When they have turned a dark golden brown and have puffed up to about twice their size, the donuts are ready. Carefully remove the donuts from the oil, and place them on a cooling rack or some paper towel to drain.
  9. Once they're all cooked, you can either toss the donuts in cinnamon sugar or powdered sugar, or glaze them. I used a mixture of puréed blackberries and icing sugar to top mine.

Tags:

  • Cake
  • Biscuit
  • Bread
  • Pastry
  • American
  • Milk/Cream
  • Fry
  • Summer
  • Father's Day
  • Valentine's Day
  • Fourth of July
  • Winter

See what other Food52ers are saying.

  • Laura415

  • Suzanne Truong Hoyer

  • Goose

Recipe by: Sarah Coates

Sarah is the author and photographer behind The Sugar Hit, a blog solely devoted to the joys of eating. She is a typical 21st century creative type, totally obsessed with food, writing, design, photography and styling. She lives in Brisbane, Australia and regularly eats mountains of crudités in a misguided attempt to offset the staggering amounts of butter she consumes daily.

Popular on Food52

3 Reviews

Goose November 16, 2020

OMG my partner just surprised me with this wonderful cinnamon sugar delight. The Biscuit doughnut is amazing. ***GreatRecipe*** I will definitely let everyone I know about this one. I have a question about substituting some ingredients for my Father who can’t have flower or butter. Do you by any chance have any suggestions. Great Job!!!

Thank you
Goose:)

Laura415 December 14, 2015

I like this. I will try it with a gluten free flour mix since I already make great biscuits with it. Looking forward to seeing what the texture will be like.

Suzanne T. February 3, 2015

Can you not cut a hole into them and then fill them with custard or jelly?

Fried Angel Biscuit Donuts Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

Why are my fried donuts not fluffy? ›

Underproofed – leads to stiffer (denser) donuts that don't puff up well when fried. Cracked donuts – this may have happened if you used a cutter and it wasn't sharp enough to cut through the dough cleanly. Or the dough is underproofed or too cold.

How do you shape donuts for frying? ›

Using a donut cutter (dunked in flour) cut as many rounds and you can. If you don't have a donut cutter you could use a biscuit cutter or a cookie cutter and a smaller cutter of some sort to make the hole - maybe the rim of a small shot glass. They don't need to be perfect circles, frying will change that anyway!!

What are the long twisty donuts called? ›

Cruller. This doughnut has a unique, twisted shape that may be rectangular or circular. In New England, these beloved doughnuts tend to be of the rectangular variety. But the French Cruller is generally ring-shaped.

What kind of donut is fried? ›

Beignet. A small yeasted doughnut that's French in origin, beignets are also a staple in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, where they're served dusted with powdered sugar. They're made of choux pastry, which is a French pastry dough that puffs when fried.

What is the best oil to use for frying doughnuts? ›

What kind of oil is best for cooking donuts? The best oil is the one with the least flavour. Vegetable oil and canola oil are both very good in this respect. The most important thing is to use the same oil for the same kinds of foods, since oil readily absorbs flavours and aromas.

What is the secret for soft doughnuts? ›

Use bread flour – the key ingredient in this recipe, for soft doughnuts, is bread flour. Using bread flour guarantees that your doughnut will come out fluffy. Know your yeast – Follow the steps in the recipe notes if using active dry yeast. Instant yeast can be mixed in with the other ingredients.

What is the best pan for frying donuts? ›

Cast-Iron Frying Pans

And they retain heat so well that they're a good choice for deep-frying chicken, doughnuts, or other foods because they keep the oil at a constant temperature. The details: Cast-iron frying pans are practically indestructible, and they're handed down for generations in many families.

What temperature do you fry homemade donuts at? ›

Fry at about 375° to 380° F (190.6° to 193.3° C). Donuts brown too rapidly and may have raw or doughy centers if fried in fat that is too hot. Donuts fried in colder shortening brown too slowly and absorb excessive frying shortening. When should glaze be applied to yeast-raised donuts?

Is it better to fry donuts in oil or shortening? ›

We have found that peanut oil or vegetable shortening yield the best texture for donuts, with shortening producing the crispest exteriors. However, frying in shortening can result in a somewhat waxy/fatty mouthfeel, but not everyone finds that to be the case. High-quality shortening will help avoid the problem.

What is a honeymooners donut? ›

Our honeymooners are made from our donut dough and topped with a generous spoonful of our fruity pie fillings and surrounded by vanilla icing. CHERRY.

What is a voodoo doll donut? ›

Raised yeast doughnut filled with raspberry jelly topped with chocolate frosting and a pretzel stake. Characteristics of Voodoo Dolls are all different.

What is a puddle donut? ›

A puddle of rich, velvety caramel surrounded by a light airy donut, topped with chocolate icing and finished with chocolate drizzle. Lemon Meringue Puddle Doughnut.

What does the 🍩 mean? ›

or especially US donut (ˈdəʊnʌt ) noun. 1. a small cake of sweetened dough, often ring-shaped or spherical with a jam or cream filling, cooked in hot fat. 2.

Is it better to bake or fry doughnuts? ›

Baked doughnuts are smaller, baking powder driven and more compact. A typical fried glazed donut will be around 269 calories, while a baked donut will have much fewer. The difference is the fact that you won't be dealing with any extra fat from the oil from frying when you bake.

Can you fry donuts in Crisco? ›

Old-Fashioned Donuts by @ChristinaTosi are truly timeless ❤️ Pro tip: frying with Crisco All-Vegetable Shortening ensures your doughnuts will have a crispy outside, and a fluffy inside!

Why didn't my donuts puff up? ›

The liquid was too hot, or not hot enough.

It will usually tell you to use “warm” water. The water temperature should be between 110 - 115 F degrees. If your liquid is too hot (i.e. boiling) it will kill the yeast and prevent the rise. If it's not hot enough, the yeast won't have the heat needed to bloom.

Why are my homemade donuts so dense? ›

Yeast. Yeast is a tiny yet magical organism that helps doughs of all kinds rise. Without yeast, your doughnuts might resemble dense disks rather than fluffy rings. There are a variety of types of yeasts available for purchase, and some bakers even capture native yeasts to create their own unique doughnut dough.

How does Krispy Kreme make their donuts so fluffy? ›

A batch of original glazed starts with Krispy Kreme doughnut mix, water and yeast, the same single-cell fungi used to make bread rise. The yeast is what makes the original glazed so light -- it puffs the dough up with air, so it's not dense like a cake doughnut (more on this later).

Is it better to fry donuts in lard or oil? ›

Lard and tallow are the traditional fats for frying donuts. Their high saturated fat content sets nicely on the donut surface to produce a “dry” donut that holds for a length of time.

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