Ginger Doughnuts

When you've had a rubbish couple of weeks, when your fringe is too long to do anything with, when the car won't start (because she is a diva in cold weather), when you just can't do any more studying, when you havent managed to go for a run for a good week and one of your cats has taken to waiting until 2am to sing the "song of her people" at the bottom of the stairs...

... Just throw in the towel for a while, and come and deep fry some things with me.

I'll always be here for you with a deep frying pan of hot oil at the ready.

It's ok to feel a bit blue. You can eat doughnuts and hang out with your cat. More whiskers the better.

Makes around 12 with doughnut holes

Ingredients

Doughnuts

1tbsp fast action yeast (around 1 x 7gr sachet)
25gr soft brown sugar
1tsp ginger powder
25gr butter
250ml milk
1 egg
300gr plain flour (plus extra for dusting)

Glaze

75gr icing sugar
1inch lump of stem ginger in syrup, grated finely
2tsp of stem ginger syrup from the jar
Water

Method

1, In a large bowl, add the yeast, sugar and ginger powder.
2, In a small saucepan, gently melt the butter and add in the milk. Bring this to a lukewarm temperature.
3, Stir the melted butter and milk into the yeast, sugar and ginger.
4, Beat in the egg.
5, Sift in the flour. Stir this until the batter is thick and has a soft elasticity to it.
6, Cover with clingfilm and pop in a warm place for between an hour and two or until doubled in size.
7, Scoop out your dough onto a floured surface and fold it over a couple of times using a dough scraper (or your hands - prepare to get sticky) and dust with a little more flour to stop it sticking. The dough is quite soft but it should hold. If your dough is unmanagably soft, chuck a bit more flour on it and gently knead in.
8, Roll out the dough, or pat it out with your hands until it is about 2.5cm thick. Cut out your doughnuts in whatever size or shape you want. Use a smaller cutter to stamp out the centre.
9, You can reroll the dough to make more doughnuts - space them out on a lined baking sheet, cover with clingfilm and then put them back in the warm place for 30mins to an hour until they have risen up again.

10, In a deep frying pan, heat about 4-5cm of hot oil to 180o/c. Do a test doughnut (or doughnut hole). It should bubble, float and go golden within 30-45 seconds. Carefully flip it over to brown on the other side, remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper.
11, Cook all the doughnuts and leave to cool slightly before dipping them in the glaze.

12, To make the glaze, add the icing sugar, syrup and grated stem ginger into a small bowl. Add a tablespoon of water and mix. Keep adding water until you reach your desired consistecy - I like my glaze quite thin but it's purely on your preference.