Daring Bakers: "Let's Go Nuts for Doughnuts!" - Rose scented Lokumades

Ezt a bejegyzést kivételesen angolul írom, de akik kiváncsiak rá, miről van szó, íme: Csatlakoztam a Daring Bakers csapatához, és ebben a hónapban a feladatunk az volt, hogy fánkot készítsünk, és miután én palozok, a Lokumadest választottam, amiben nincs tejtermék, a lisztet pedig felcseréltem zabpehely lisztre. Sajnos nem sikerült másodszori próbálkozásra sem, az időből pedig kifutottam, úgyhogy idén biztosan nem én leszek a gluténmentes fánkok bajnoka!

(My first attempt with the ground almond and sesame)

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

We were given some example recipes, but we could set our mind free and do whatever we fancied!

Since I've gone paleo, I don't eat anything consisting gluten, lactose or sugar, so I was looking for a recipe which didn't call for butter or milk, and I found Lokumades, which is the Greeks' version of doughnut, made without butter, milk and I substituted the plain flour for oat-flakes flour.

Well, I must admit that making doughnut didn't turn me on so much, because I don't really like cooking with oil on the one hand because of its taste and on the second hand because it makes me smell oily and my whole kitchen. But when I got over it in mind, and started preparing the ingredients I felt excited to try making doughnuts. When I was younger my mother and grandmother usually cooked doughnuts when there was some celebration, especially at Easter. It's kind of a habitual thing in Hungary that we make them and we eat them with different kinds of jams (I vote for apricot!).

Well, Lokumades is a doughnut which is basically a doughnut hole (rather, than a doughnut) which is cooked in oil and then sprinkled with generous amount of cinnamon, and at last rose scented honey-syrup is poured over.

The real challenge for me was to make it gluten free. Me, silly, my first try to go gluten-free was to use ground nuts: almond and sesame. Now it seems to me that I didn't think it throught, because the nuts did not only burn, it had a horrible taste. Gone to the trash.

My second attempt was to use oat-flakes flour, which looks exactly like plain flour, so I thought why this coudn't succeed. Well, it couldn't. I am so disappointed, and now I officially decide never to try it again. I don't know what when wrong, the amounts of the ingredients were precise, the quality of the ingredients was impeccable, it looked like how it should have looked like, but the result wasn't good again. Gone to trash.

So, as a verdict I can tell I tried my best to go gluten and lactose free, (also almost sugar free, because the dough only contained 1tsp of sugar) but I was defeated badly. Hopefully the next challenge will be more suitable for me.

Anyways, I'm posting the recipe, hopefully you will have better luck with it:

Lokumades

33g dry yeast

1tsp of sugar

250ml hot water

1 egg

210g oat-flakes flour

pinch of salt

pinch of ground nutmeg

1tsp of vanilla extract

1tsp of ground cinnamon

for the syrup:

2tbsp honey

1tbsp water

1tsp rose extract

1tsp lemon juice

Pour the warm water into the prepared bowl and stir in the sugar. When dissolved, stir in the yeast. Let it rise in a warm place ( I placed it into the oven to 36°C), it takes about 10 min.

Then crack and stir in the egg, spices and everything else (except the cinnamon). Let it rise for 1hour in a warm place (I put it back to the oven).

In the last 20 minutes, warm the oil (it takes about 20min) and when the dough is ready, with the help two spoons drop the dough into the oil, wait and turn them upside down, then place them to paper towels and sprinkle them with the 1tsp of cinnamon.

For the syrup you need to heat the things listed together and than pour the warm syrup over the warm doughnuts.