Baked Doughnuts with Lemon Cream Cheese Glaze ~~We Knead To Bake#6

Do you know National Doughnut Day is celebrated in United States on every first friday of June. As per Wikipedia,A doughnut or donut is a type of fried dough confectionery or dessert food. The doughnut is popular in many countries and prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franchised specialty outlets. They are usually deep-fried from a flour dough, and typically either ring-shaped or without a hole and often filled. Other types of batters can also be used, and various toppings and flavorings are used for different types, such as sugar glazing, chocolate glazing, or maple glazing.

There are so many stories behind the origin of doughnuts, Wiki says that Hanson Gregory, an American, claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 aboard a lime-trading ship when he was only 16 years old. Gregory was dissatisfied with the greasiness of doughnuts twisted into various shapes and with the raw center of regular doughnuts. He claimed to have punched a hole in the center of dough with the ship's tin pepper box, and later taught the technique to his mother.

For this month's We Knead to Bake, an incredible baking event by Aparna challenged us with baked doughts, if you are health nut and wanna a give a try to baked version of doughnuts, you will definitely love this beauties.Butter in this doughnuts turned them simply flavourful,spongy and extremely prefect as almost like the fried ones. These baked doughnuts are quite addictive and since its baked you wont feel guilty to have one more.

Adapated from  Lara Ferroni's Doughnuts
3+1/2cups Cake flour or all purpose flour
3/4tbsp Instant yeast or 1tbsp Active dry yeast
1/2tsp Salt
1cup Warm milk
1/4cup Superfine sugar
2tsp Vanilla extract
100grms Butter (cut into cubes)

Lemon Cream cheese glaze:
1/2cup Cream cheese
1tsp Lemon juice
1/2tsp Lemon zest
1cup Confectioner's sugar
A pinch Yellow food colour

Take the sugar,milk,yeast,salt and vanilla in a food processor and pulse it well.

Add 3cups of flour and process, add the butter pieces gradually and process, now add the remaining half a cup of flour to knead a soft,pliable and elastic dough, if the dough is sticky add few more flours.

Transfer the dough a floured surface and knead gently until the dough turns super soft.

Shape as ball and place it in a greased mixing bowl and ocover with a damp towel.

The dough will take an hour to double in volume.

Punch down the dough and roll out as 1/2inch thick circle.

Cut out the doughnuts with a doughnut cutter or else use a medium sized bottle lid and a super small bottle lid.

Place the doughnuts over a lightly greased baking sheets,leaving enough spaces between them.

Re-roll the dough and continue the same process until the dough gets finished.

Let the unbaked doughnuts rise for about half an hour or till almost double in size.

Bake at 400F, for about 7-10minutes till the crust turns golden brown,dont overbake them.

While they are baking, time to make the lemon cream cheese glaze..

Take the cream cheese,lemon juice,lemon zest,yellow food colour,confectioner's sugar in a bowl,mix well to make a lemon glaze and keep aside.

Let the baked doughnuts gets cool completely, then dip one side of the doughnuts in the lemon cream cheese glaze and let it set.

Enjoy with ur favourite drink or for snacks.