Chocolate chip donuts: out of the fryer, into the oven

Hey kids, it's story time!

Back in elementary school, I went to after-school daycare at the local Jewish Community Center. I'm not Jewish, so I don't know how Mom decided this would be the best place for me to spend my afternoons -- I suspect it had something to do with the Center's proximity to our house, the prevalence of Challah bread, or my last name, but I cannot say with certainty. 

I liked the JCC well enough, but one thing I found very odd was that I seemed to be the only kid from my elementary school (literally, the only one) who went there.  I felt this most acutely in kindergarten, when my school was the first stop on the JCC bus route and every day I rode an enormous school bus with just one other person: the driver. This turned out to be rather fortuitous, though, because the bus driver also worked at a donut shop and sometimes brought leftovers for us kids. As the lone rider, I always got to pick first from the vast array. (As an aside, I ended up becoming friends with my driver, to the point where he gave me a pack of crayons for Christmas and I drew him a thank you card. I wonder what happened to him...)

All of this is just a long way of saying that while I wouldn't call myself a donut fanatic, and I very rarely crave donuts, I still feel like a kid when ever I go into a donut shop and get to pick whatever kind I want. And, of course, there are times when donuts can be truly and utterly divine.

I much prefer dense donuts to regular ones -- chocolate old fashions are my donut Achilles' heels (I also like blueberry cake ones, which I know is really weird, but I think it's because I just like anything with blueberries) -- so this year for Christmas, I asked for a donut pan. 

I've always been intrigued by the idea of baking donuts instead of frying them, and I've seen recipes for baked donuts floating around over the years, so the concept has been in the back of my mind for a while. When I got back to LA, a recipe for baked donuts popped up on the King Arthur Flour company blog, so it seemed the time had come to break in the new pan.

As usual, I did not follow the recipe to a T. I didn't have nutmeg, so instead I used pumpkin pie spice -- I think it still tasted good, but I guess purists might beg to differ. Additionally, I don't usually keep milk on hand because I'm lactose intolerant; I ended up using soy milk, which is a frequent substitution for me. Finally, I only had regular sized chips, and that seemed too big for the donut proportions, so I chopped up the chips into smaller bits. I also sprinkled a little bit of chocolate in the bottom of each donut mold, which tasted good but didn't turn out to be as visually appealing as I'd pictured in my head.

Here's the final product:

Verdict: I'm going to call a spade a spade on this one -- baked is not the same as fried, but you know what? They were pretty tasty nonetheless. These ones puffed up nicely, so they LOOKED like donuts at the very least, and they were not too hard or dry, which seemed like the biggest potential pitfall in my book. The texture is not quite as dense and crumbly as a cake donut, but not quite as fluffy as a real cake. One of my classmates compared it to coffee cake, which I interpret as a positive feedback. 

And the final test: will I make these again? I think so! I'm looking forward to trying other variations though -- maybe with blueberries. ;)

Here is the recipe, adapted from King Arthur Flour Company's blog (I actually made a half-recipe for 6 donuts, but here are the proportions for a whole dozen):

Ingredients
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 2/3 cups AP flour
1 cup soy milk
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, chopped into bits

Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly grease two standard donut pans.

2) In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat together the butter, vegetable oil, and sugars until smooth.

3) Add the eggs, beating to combine.

4) Stir in the baking powder, baking soda, spices, salt, and vanilla.

5) Stir the flour into the butter mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour and making sure everything is thoroughly combined.

6) Sprinkle some chocolate chip bits into each donut pan, and stir the remaining chopped up chocolate chips into the batter

8) Spoon 1/2 the batter into a lightly greased doughnut pans, filling the wells to the rim for chocolate chip doughnuts.

9) Bake the doughnuts for 10 minutes. Remove them from the oven, and wait 5 to 7 minutes before turning them out of the pans onto a rack. Repeat chocolate sprinkles and baking process for second 1/2 dozen. Enjoy warm; or cool completely, and store airtight.