Vanilla Doughnuts filled with Strawberry Jam

These vanilla specked doughnuts have a lovely homemade strawberry jam inside. You could use a storebought jam but push it through a sieve first and thin it with a tablespoon of water if it is too thick to use as filling.

Ingredients:

  • 250ml milk
  • 20gr sugar
  • 3gr salt
  • 1 egg
  • 25gr soft butter
  • 0.5 tsp vanilla extract
  • seeds of 1/2 vanilla pod
  • 13gr dried yeast
  • 250gr strong white bread flour
  • sunflower oil (2 liter works best but depends on your pan, 5-6cm deep does the trick)

Jam Filling:

  • 200gr strawberries (frozen is fine)
  • 1 tbs water
  • 80-100gr jam sugar (sugar with added pectin)

Makes approximately 20-25 small or 10-15 large

Recipe:

Combine the milk, sugar, salt, egg, vanilla extract and the soft butter.
Stir the vanilla pod seeds and the dried yeast into the flour, then add the liquids one ladle full at a time.
Mix (preferably in a free standing mixer) for 10 minutes. Cover the bowl and leave to rest for an hour.

Meanwhile, heat the sunflower oil to 180-190°C.

Scoop the dough in portions into the oil. I use a small (4cm) ice-cream scoop to portion the dough, and bake approximately 10 at a time. Do not overcrowd the pan as it may cause the oliebollen to stick together, but it will definitely drop the temperature of the oil a lot, which results in the doughnuts taking longer to crisp up, which will cause them to absorb more oil and becoming quite oily. Flip them over once the bottom is nicely browned.
Regular sized doughnuts (5cm ice-cream scoop) should take approximately 6 minutes (3 on each side) and small doughnuts (4cm ice scoop) take about 3-4 minutes.
Take them out of the pan with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Space them out while cooling to avoid them getting squashed and becoming watery from the condensation as hot doughnuts are tossed on top each time.

Make the strawberry jam by combining the strawberries, water and 80gr of sugar in a pan. Heat and leave to simmer gently until the liquid has thickened and forms a thin jam when cooled (cool a few drops quickly on a cold plate to test). Blend the jam by using an immersion blender. Taste the jam. If needed, add more sugar. The jam should be a thick liquid. Boil longer should it be necessary. You don’t want the jam to run out.
Leave the jam to cool. Fill a doughnut syringe (or a meat marinade syringe, or even a piping bag fitted with a thin nozzle) with the jam. Poke the syringe into the middle of a cold doughnut and fill them with the jam. Do not overfill as the jam will run out. If using a piping bag and nozzle, you may need to poke a hole in the doughnuts first to fill up.