Vegan doughnuts - naughty but nice

A few years ago I had a noodle dish on my menu that involved making some deep fried Indonesian sweetcorn fritters. The recipe used flour, soy sauce for seasoning and ground rice - an ingredient I hadn't worked with before which for me was interesting enough. As the the weeks passed I noticed that the fritters had a very puffy and light consistency. They looked suspiciously like mini doughnuts! Vegan doughnuts at that! Fantastic!

The next day I set about rearranging the recipe to make it sweet and I was rewarded with the worlds first (probably) vegan doughnuts. I put it on the next menu and they sold like hot cakes and have on every menu I have included them since then.



The recipe is delightfully simple but you will need a deep fat fryer of some sort. I have fried them in a wok of oil before now and it works well but you will need to be extra careful if you do this.

For the doughnuts
250g (1 cup) self raising flour
140g (just over half cup) ground rice or rice flour
100g (half cup) caster or fine sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
250ml (1 cup) soy cream or soy milk
150ml water

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and then whisk in the soy cream and water. Leave it to stand for an hour. Heat your oil to 200°C or 390°F and carefully add spoonfuls of the doughnut batter.
Don't overload the oil - do five or six at a time. They will rise to the surface and when they are browned on one side flip them over.



When they are golden brown all over allow them to drain for 1 to 2 minutes and then roll them in caster sugar. Serve them hot as they are or with some fruit sauce such as raspberry or strawberry or chocolate sauce. Lashings of cream go well also.

Heres a recipe for raspberry sauce that you can make in the winter

Raspberry sauce
350g (12oz) frozen raspberries
100g sugar
Bring the raspberries and sugar to the boil and simmer then together for a few minutes. Cool and whizz them up in a blender or food processor. Sieve and serve.

You might have thought that this was all you could do with the doughnuts but there is more. Because we have a batter it means things can be dipped in it and fried. This is where it gets very exciting. Take your favourite fruit ie strawberries, mango, banana etc, dip them in the doughnut batter and deep fry them. Roll them in the sugar and serve hot or cold. Ripe mango works especially well.

Why not try a banana split by frying two halves of a banana in the doughnut batter, serving them with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce! delish.