Make Your Own Berliner Doughnuts – 4 Different Ways

First, pour the milk into a pan and heat it, along with the butter, sugar, vanilla flavoring and the yeast. It should become warm enough that the butter and sugar dissolve — but don't let it get too hot. Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly with a whisk.

Next, put the flour, eggs and salt into a bowl, and pour in the milk and yeast mixture. Use dough hooks in an electric whisk to knead everything into a dough. The consistency should be such that it comes away from the bowl easily. Form it into a ball and leave it, covered, to stand in a warm place for 45 minutes.

Now, knead the dough through strongly once more on a floured work surface and divide it, with a dough scraper for example, into 12 equal-sized pieces. Form each piece into a ball, cover them, and leave them to stand once again in a warm place for another 20 minutes.

The last step of the basic recipe is to fry the dough balls in hot fat. Heat the oil in a large pan to 360°F and place the dough balls inside carefully using a skimmer. Bake them for about 30 seconds on each side. Then leave them on a cooling rack to cool down.

To fill your donuts, use a cake pop stick to make a hole in each one from one side that reaches roughly to the middle. Rotate the stick back and forward a few times to enlarge the hole.

For the first, fill a piping bag with a narrow spout with strawberry jelly, squirt the jelly in and dip half of the donut in the white couverture.

For the second, fill a piping bag with plum jelly and pipe it into the donut. Then dip half the donut in the sugar.

For the third variation, squeeze some egg liqueur pudding mix into the pastry and then dunk it halfway into the dark couverture.

For the fourth version, pipe in some apple sauce and then dunk the donut to the halfway point in caramel sauce.

Equipment Needed

Spice Level: