Growing up I had many family members who worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, which meant instead of boxes of mithai (Indian desserts) for Diwali, we’d share boxes of doughnuts. A family favorite was their toasted coconut variety. Coconut is used quite commonly in Indian sweets—one of my favorite coconut-based mithai is coconut barfi, also known as kopra pak, a fudge-like dessert. It’s made with a mixture of coconut, cardamom, milk, and sugar. My recipe combines the flavors of coconut barfi with those beloved toasted coconut doughnuts, creating my dream Diwali doughnut to celebrate with. It’s especially easy: They’re baked, so there’s no fussing with fry oil, and they’re cake doughnuts meaning you take temperamental yeast out of the equation. But there are a couple steps you can’t skip if you want them to be at their bakery-level best.
Use fresh-ground spices.
The key to making these doughnuts taste like they were made in a doughnut shop is nutmeg. I highly recommend using freshly grated nutmeg as it’s more potent than pre-ground, and it really gives that nostalgic doughnut-y flavor. As a rule of thumb, I like to use freshly ground spices because a lot of the flavor compounds in spices are volatile, meaning they are sensitive to heat and sunlight. When you grind a spice, the compounds will easily and quickly evaporate off, and the spice will soon lose its potency. The same rule goes for the cardamom in this recipe. I prefer to get my whole nutmeg from Burlap and Barrel and cardamom from Diaspora Co. A little goes a long way when you splurge on the good stuff: It’s more aromatic, so the flavor shines through.
Gradually fold in your dry ingredients.
A common but essential step in many baking recipes. To get the correct cake doughnut texture, be sure to fold in your flour in three increments. When you fold flour into a wet batter, you start to develop gluten. Gluten is a protein that helps hold baked goods together. The less you mix cake batter once flour is added, the less gluten you create and the more tender your cake will be. In this case, you want your cake doughnuts to be soft, but not so soft that they fall apart when you unmold them or glaze them. Adding the flour in a few additions keeps the gluten in check, so you have a plush cake doughnut with just the right amount of structure.
Hole in one:
