Custard Doughnuts
These custard doughnuts are homemade fried doughnuts with a homemade vanilla custard filling.
Jump to Recipe
Doughnuts
I already have one doughnut recipe on my blog: my ring doughnuts, which I absolutely love, but I really fancied a doughnut with a filling.
Custard doughnuts aren’t a new thing; they have been around forever, but this recipe combines my ring doughnuts with the most delicious homemade custard filling.
Doughnuts do take a lot of time to make, as they need to be proofed twice, but they are honestly so worth it.
Dough
The dough to make doughnuts is like bread dough. It needs to be proved twice before you can fry them. One of the things you need when it comes to making any bread or doughnuts is patience.
The doughnut dough does require a few ingredients, but they are all integral to making a lovely, light and fluffy doughnut.
Whole Milk – The milk in the recipe will give you a softer and tender dough.
Related Recipes
Strong White Bread Flour – This can be swapped out for plain flour if you prefer. The plain flour will give your doughnuts a more cakey texture rather than a bready texture if you were to use strong white bread flour.
Caster Sugar – The sugar in a doughnut recipe is super important. Not only does it add sweetness to your doughnuts, but it also feeds the yeast, which helps the doughnuts to rise.
Dried Active Yeast – Another super important ingredient in your doughnuts. The yeast ferments the sugars in the dough, creating carbon dioxide, which helps the doughnuts to rise and become light and fluffy in texture.
Eggs – I would recommend using medium eggs in this recipe.
Butter – This helps give the doughnuts their richness.
Kneading
So if you haven’t made doughnuts or any kind of dough before, I would recommend doing it by hand. This is a lot more work and can be quite tiring, but it helps give you a feel for the dough.
This way you can feel the dough changing from being quite sticky when you first start to work with it to being lovely and soft and springy to the touch.
If you have a stand mixer, you can, of course, knead the dough using the dough hooks. This is the easier of the two options because you just switch the mixer on and let it do its thing. The problem with this is that it is much easier to over-knead your dough. If you do end up over-kneading the dough, your doughnuts will be dense and chewy.
Rise
The dough needs to be proofed twice so that it has the correct texture. If you try and rush the proof or skip it altogether, then the dough won’t have risen enough, and your doughnuts will be quite dense and chewy compared to the light and fluffy doughnuts you want.
Each time the dough rises, it should double in size. Once you have kneaded the dough, pop it into a lightly oiled bowl (this stops it from sticking and makes it easier to remove), cover with a tea towel or clingfilm and leave it on the side in the kitchen.
It should take between 1 hour and 30 minutes and 2 hours to double in size. This depends on how warm your kitchen is. If you are making these in the summer and it is warm, you might find that they double in size a lot quicker. If you are making them in the winter when it is colder, you might find that they take slightly longer.
Shaping
Once the dough has had its first proof, you need to shape it. The best way to do this is to weigh your dough and then split the weight by 12. This way, each of your doughnuts is going to be the same size.
Roll the dough into a ball shape. It can be tricky to begin with, but you are essentially wanting a dough ball shape. Each doughnut is roughly the same size and shape.
Put all your shaped doughnuts onto a lined baking sheet, remember and leave space in between each doughnut as we need to prove them again.
This time though, we are going to proof them for around 3-4 hours until they have doubled in size again.
At this point, I would recommend making your custard filling and getting it chilled in the fridge, but it is completely up to you. The doughnuts are best eaten on the day of baking, so the sooner you have everything ready to fry, cool and fill them, the sooner you get to enjoy them.
Frying
The oil for your doughnuts needs to be 180°C. If you are making these in a large pan of oil, it would be best to use a thermometer to check that the temperature is correct.
Before frying them, you might want to get your sugar ready and a baking tray lined with kitchen roll too.
The doughnuts need to be carefully moved from your baking tray into the oil. Depending on the size of the pan you are using, you should be able to cook 2-3 at a time. You want the doughnuts to be able to bob around in the oil without touching.
Once your doughnuts are in the oil, set a timer, as they will only need around 2-3 minutes on each side to cook fully. I would recommend putting your doughnuts in the pan, waiting the 2-3 minutes and then flipping them all over. This way, you don’t have a lot of doughnuts, all at various stages of frying, and you are less likely to under- or overcook them.
Coat
I coated these doughnuts in sugar as it is just a classic look. Once they had fried them, I took them out of the oil and put them onto my kitchen roll. This helps to soak up any excess oil before you dip them into the sugar.
Custard Filling
I used a homemade custard filling for these doughnuts, and I 100% recommend it. It is a lot thicker compared with a ready-made custard you can buy from the shops.
The custard filling is vanilla-flavoured. To get the vanilla flavouring, you can either use a vanilla pod and infuse this with the milk. Or you can add vanilla bean paste to the milk before you warm it up.
Both the vanilla pod and the vanilla bean paste will give your custard a lovely vanilla-speckled look.
You don’t want the milk to be boiling, just steaming, before adding it to your egg, sugar and flour mixture. If the milk is too hot, it will cook and scramble the eggs.
Whisking the flour mixture as you are adding the milk will also help to prevent it from curdling. Once all the milk has been added, the custard needs to go back into a saucepan and be put on the heat for around 10 minutes. At this point, it does need to be whisked continuously, and it will begin to thicken up.
If you have used a vanilla pod, remove this from the custard mixture. Cover the custard mixture with clingfilm, ensuring that the clingfilm is touching the custard so it doesn’t form a skin. Once it has cooled, pop it into the fridge.
Once you are ready to use your custard, remove it from the fridge and fold in your whisked double cream. This will help to make your custard extra thick and creamy. Perfect for piping into the inside of your doughnuts.
I used one of these piping tips to pipe the custard into the doughnut. I piped it into the side of the doughnut.
Alternatives
You could replace the custard in these doughnuts with jam to make jam doughnuts.
You could also replace the custard with a caramel.
Add cinnamon to the sugar to coat your doughnuts.
Add 150g of chocolate to the milk mixture to make chocolate custard. You will only need to add half the amount of cream.
Equipment
*I earn a small amount of money if you buy any of these products. You will not be charged anything extra for this. Thank you for supporting A Spoonful of Vanilla.
Pin it For Later!
If you do have any questions about these Custard Doughnuts or any other recipes on my blog you can contact me either by sending me a DM on social media or an email. You can find all my details on the right-hand side of this page.
Custard Doughnuts
Ingredients
For the Doughnut Dough
- 75 ml Water
- 75 ml Whole Milk
- 500 g Strong White Bread Flour
- 50 g Caster Sugar
- 14 g Dried Active Yeast
- 4 Medium Eggs
- 125 g Unsalted Butter
For the Vanilla Custard Filling
- 1 tbsp Vanilla Bean Paste
- 500 ml Whole Milk
- 6 Egg Yolks
- 125 g Caster Sugar
- 75 g Plain Flour
- 200 ml Double Cream
Extras
- 2-5 L Sunflower/Vegetable Oil (depending on how big your pot/fryer is)
- 400 g Caster Sugar
Instructions
To Make the Dough
- Add your water, milk, flour, sugar, yeast and eggs to a bowl and mix together using a dough hook for around 5 minutes until all the ingredients come together and a dough is formed.
- While mixing add in the butter gradually.
- Once all the butter has been added, keep mixing for another 5-10 minutes until the dough is lovely and smooth. You will know it is ready when it springs back when pressed. It will be quite sticky.
- Transfer the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with cling film or a tea towel. Leave to rise for 1-2 hours or until the dough has doubled in size.
- Once the dough has doubled in size, tip it out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface and "knock it back." Pop it into the fridge overnight to rise.
- The next day, split your dough into even amounts and shape into balls. The easiest way to do this is to roll them lightly between your hands or on a hard surface.
- Add the dough balls to a lined baking sheet. Remember and leave space between them as they will rise. Leave to rise again for 3-4 hours.
- Once the dough has risen, pour your oil into a pan or a fryer and heat to 180°C
- Add your caster sugar to a large bowl and set to one side. Line a baking tray with kitchen roll so that you can remove any excess oil after the doughnuts have cooked.
- Careful not to burn yourself, lower your doughnuts, lower them into the oil and fry for 2-3 minutes. Flip the doughnuts over and fry for a further 2-3 minutes.
- Once fried, remove from the pan or fryer and set the doughnuts down on a tray lined with kitchen roll. Use the kitchen roll to remove any excess oil.
- While the doughnuts are still hot, toss each one in the caster sugar. Transfer onto a cooling rack or lined baking tray and leave to cool fully.
To Make the Vanilla Custard Filling
- Add the egg yolks and caster sugar to a bowl and mix together. Add in the flour and mix again. The mixture should be super thick.
- Add your milk and vanilla bean paste to a saucepan and slowly bring to the boil.
- Remove the milk from the heat as soon as it starts to boil and pour slowly over our yolk mixture. This needs to be whisked continuously to prevent the mixture from curdling.
- Transfer the mixture back to the saucepan and cook over a medium heat. Whisk continously until the mixture is very thick. This should take around 10 minutes.
- Once your custard is lovely and thick, cover with cling film. Ensure that the cling film is touching the custard to prevent a skin from forming. Leave to cool, and then chill in the fridge.
- Once your custard mixture is completely cold, whip the cream in a bowl until thick and able to hold its own shape.
- Add the double cream mixture to your custard mixture and gently fold through. The custard mixture should be soft and silky but thick.
- Add the custard mixture to a piping bag and pipe into the centre of your doughnuts.
Notes
- These Custard Doughnuts will last for 24 hours when stored in the fridge.
- Replace the custard with jam to make these jam doughnuts.
- Doughnuts can be tricky to make, especially if this is your first time. I have tried to cover everything in this blog post, but if you have any questions, please reach out, and I will be more than happy to help.