Ok, Ben clearly has come out swinging with this one. Anything related to baking (in this case the yeast dough) is NOT my wheelhouse so I’m probably at a disadvantage to start with, but I’ve cooked my fair share of bacon so I think I’ve still got a fighting chance of making something tasty.
Here we have the dough rising. I also used the standard recipie, and because I didn’t have proper set of round biscuit cutters (which has now been fixed) I chose a Long-John style shape.
They fried up nicely. And now I think it’s time for BACON! Rather than put the bacon right into the dough, I decided to do a filling. Which of course stars bacon:
The bacon pictured here is admittedly not very good bacon. Sometimes you gotta roll with what you got. But I highly recommend getting some good thick cut stuff for this.
Next, we need to sweeten it up a bit. We’re going to candy it with brown sugar! Mmm, tasty. Not only will that taste great, but the molases in the brown sugar will help to keep it moist.
I can’t decide what I like most about the above picture. The bacon, the sugar, or the incredibly well seasoned cast-iron pan. Next up we need some custard to mix the bacon into:
If you haven’t tried Ambrosia “Devon Custard”, you really should get some. It’s a native product of the UK, but it still can be had in the US. Usually in the larger chain stores in a specialty isle. If you don’t have that then I suppose vanilla pudding would work, but it just wouldn’t be the same.
You need to get something like a wide-mouthed food injector or one of those bag thing-a-mah-jigs that you squirt frosting with (yeah, I wasn’t kidding about the whole “I’m not a pastry chef” thing) and fill the donuts with our bacon custard.
Next up you need a glaze:
I used a pretty standard donut glaze recipe, but used a lot of Agave nectar in it. That’s become one of my favorite sweeteners. I find that normal cane sugar can just be…harsh…for lack of a better word. Agave is plenty sweet, but has a softer attack on the pallet, as well as a unique flavor. Besides, it’s what they make tequila from!
And lastly, we need a final touch as a topping to add some last minute texture and flavor:
Pictured above beside our bacon custard (and by the way I LOVE saying “bacon custard”) we have some chopped citrus flavored crasins. This will be to sprinkle on the top. Like I said, the idea was to add a final touch of texture and flavor. With that in mind, if the cranberries don’t appeal to you, you could use a chopped nut of some kind, but I thought the tartness of the citrus and the berry would add balance to all the sugar we are sloshing on it.
And finally the finished product!
Now, personally I thought it was amazing, but I didn’t have the same kind of luck Ben did with the rest of my family. I was the only one who really liked this format better than the normal donut. I think it may have been too high-brow. Have I created the first uppler-class donut?! Perhaps not, but I’ll tell you this: no one complained about the bacon!