cooking challenge week nineteen: jam doughnuts (yum yum)

Growing up in Australia, warm jam doughnuts were a tuckshop regular. I went to a small school and in those days, the canteen only opened on Tuesdays and Fridays. You would staple your 45c into a corner of a paper bag, write your name and order on the front, and then five minutes before lunch, a designated canteen liaison would get to leave class and collect a cardboard box brimming with the treats of the day. Jam doughnuts, coated generously with cinnamon and caster sugar, were the most popular treat by far.

I used to bite into them, and let the jame ooze out, and my fingers would be sticky and pink with jam when I was finished.

And so I have learned to make them. They are not difficult, but they are time consuming and messy, and positively dreadful for you, so I am not going to be whipping these babies out too often. Having said that, the first batch I made was a gift for a friend. We packed as many as we could into a polka dot red box and ate any that couldn't fit in about two minutes.

You will need:

4 cups plain white flour

2 x 7g sachets fresh yeast

300ml full fat milk

2 organic, free-range eggs

1/2 teaspoon caster sugar plus extra for dusting

1/2 teaspoon salt

Really great strawberry or raspberry jam

Flavourless vegetable oil for deep frying

What to do:

Mix the yeast sachets with a 1/2 teaspoon sugar and 1 tablespoon warm water. Stir well until you get a thick paste. Put it in a draft free place for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, put the flour, salt and butter in a large bowl and use your fingertips to rub them together, until you get the consistency of bread crumbs. Put it in a warm place for 10 minutes.

Put the milk and eggs into a bowl and whisk until combined. Pour into a well in the middle of the flour mixture. Add the yeast paste. Mix to a dough. Add more flour if too wet, more milk if too dry. The dough should be elastic and stretchy.

Cover and put in a warm, draft free place for an hour. The dough should double in size.

Put the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll to about 2cm thickness. Put a teaspoon of jam in the centre of HALF of the circles. Put some water into a little bowl and use your fingertips to run water around the edge of the circles. Lay a dough circle on top of a jam covered circle and press down. Repeat with all the dough. Once you've done this, set them aside for another half hour until they've risen some more.

Meanwhile, put the vegetable oil into a deep sauce pan and bring up to around 180'c. Carefully deep fry the doughnuts in batches for around 2 minutes - they will become quite a dark brown. Don't overcrowd the oil. Lift them out into a paper lined colander.

Mix some sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and run the doughnuts through the mix. You're done! Enjoy whilst warm.

Will I make this again? yes, yes, yes! Already have!! So great, and such a lovely treat to give good friends. I want to try baking them instead of frying them, and also using different jams for fillings.