Gluten-free donuts

One of our errands this afternoon was the grocery store. And of course the one grocery store in town is set up so that one enters next to the bakery. Scooter immediately started suggesting that we get some cookies and then fixated on the donuts. So guess what I promised to make.

This is why I love the internet. I ran a search, sifted out the bakeries with ready-made donuts (great idea, but they wouldn't exactly be able to deliver by 6 pm), and skimmed over a handful of recipes before settling on this one.

As is usually the case, however, I didn't quite have all of the ingredients on hand and had to make some substitutes. So here is what my version looked like:

2 eggs, beaten
2 cups milk (with half a lemon added; I learned about this substitution from Alton Brown)
1/4 cup butter, melted
5 cups gluten-free flour (I used 2 cups of all purpose gf flour and 3 cups of brown rice flour, both from Bob's Red Mill)
1 cup sugar
2 1/4 tsp baking soda (we have forgotten to pick up baking powder for our pantry)
2 tsp salt
2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp cinnamon (also don't have nutmeg in the pantry yet)

I followed the basic directions for mixing, letting the dough rest, and frying. I pan fried them in about 1 1/2 inches of canola oil.

They turned out pretty well. The one problem I had was keeping the temperature of the oil just right, so there are a few that are very brown on the outside and a little underdone on the inside, though not badly. I made some donut holes too, although those were actually more prone to undercooking since they were fatter than the depth of the oil.

While tasty on their own, the donuts were even better when frosted with some Cherrybrook Kitchen chocolate frosting. We recently decided to give Amazon groceries a shot, particularly with some of the gluten-free products that we use a lot or can't get around here, and the frosting arrived today. Talk about timing!