Doughnut Recipe for German Krapfen

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is a chef, food photographer, cookbook author and blogger.
Here he shares recipes, answers cooking questions and helps with cooking.

Here I show you my Doughnut recipe.

Make your own doughnuts? Preparing Berlin pancakes?

In this article with step by step photos you will learn how to bake your own German Krapfen.

1. Recipe Doughnuts

Doughnut

Baked, photographed and written down by chef Thomas Sixt.

Servings 12
Calories 888
Total Time 160 Min.
Preparation Time 20 Min.
Cook Time 140 Min.

Simple instructions for preparing German Faschingskrapfen.

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Doughnuts Recipe Image for German Krapfen
Doughnuts Recipe Image for German Krapfen © Thomas Sixt

Ingredients

For the sweet Yeast Dough

500 g flour (flour freshly sieved)
1 packet dry yeast
5 pc egg yolks
100 g icing sugar
100 g butter (soft butter)
250 ml milk (luke warm)
1 packet vanilla sugar (You can also use 2 pck.!)
1 pc Lemon (fein abreiben)
1/2 tsp Salt

For the Filling

1 tbs rum
50-80 g jam (use apricot jam or berry fruit jam)

To bake doughnuts

800 g Vegetable oil (rapeseed oil, coconut fat or sunflower oil)
2 tbs iced sugar (for sprinkling the doughnuts)

Instruction

Mix the yeast dough ingredients and prepare a smooth yeast dough for Berliner PFannkochen.
Add 5 egg yolks, 100 g powdered sugar, 100 g softened butter and 250 ml lukewarm milk, 2 sachets of vanilla sugar, lemon zest from one lemon and 1/2 teaspoon salt and work into a smooth dough.

Prepare dough

Sieve the flour into a bowl and mix with the dry yeast.

Prepare the donut dough
Please work with room-warm ingredients, the doughnut dough then succeeds better!

Add ingredients

Add the egg yolks, icing sugar, soft butter and lukewarm milk, vanilla sugar, lemon grater and salt.

Knead into a smooth dough using a food processor.

Risen yeast dough in a warm mixing bowl.
The yeast dough doubles its volume when "let rise". The yeast dough is now ready to roll out and cut out.

Let dough rise

Cover the dough with a kitchen towel and let it rise in the oven at 35 degrees Celsius top/bottom heat for about an hour.

Mix the apricot jam with the rum.
Mix the apricot jam with the rum.

Prepare jam

Mix the jam with the rum and make ready for filling.

Yeast dough for donuts when cutting out.
Roll out the yeast dough approx. 1 cm thick and cut out.

Cutting out

Knead the risen yeast dough with floured hands and roll it out to a thickness of 5-10 mm on a floured work surface.

Use a cutter to cut out round dough pieces.

Donut molding and filling.
Put jam on the dough pieces. You can also fill the donuts later with a syringe, this time I'll show you the variant of direct filling.

Filling

Place 1 teaspoon of the prepared jam in the middle of each half of the dough.

Donut fill part 2
Seal the dough pieces with jam with another piece of dough and press them together at the sides.

Closing

Place the other dough pieces on top of the dough pieces covered with jam and press them together well at the sides.

Let the filled donuts rise again.
Place the filled dough pieces on a floured baking tray, cover with a kitchen towel and let rise again for 30 minutes in the oven at 35 ° C top / bottom heat.

Let rise

Place the stuffed doughnut dough pieces at a sufficient distance on a floured baking tray with baking paper.

Let the stuffed doughnuts rise again in the oven at 35°C for 30 minutes to an hour.

The doughnuts should double in volume.

Bake fresh donuts in fat
Bake the donut dough pieces in hot fat at 165-170 ° C. Rapeseed oil, sunflower oil and coconut oil are suitable.

Fry doughnuts

Heat the vegetable oil to 170°C in a pot.

Fry the raw Krapfen bit by bit, on each side for about two to three minutes.

Homemade donuts, donuts, carnival donuts.
Place the freshly baked donuts on kitchen paper, then arrange on plates or platters and sprinkle with icing sugar. The donuts filled according to the instructions do not have a white border due to their weight. If you insist on the white donut rim, you bake the donuts without filling and sharpen the filling with a syringe after the donuts have baked.

Drain

After baking, place the Krapfen on kitchen paper and drain briefly.

Make carnival donuts yourself
In this article I will show you how to prepare carnival donuts with a recipe.

Serve

Serve the cooled Krapfen sprinkled with icing sugar/dust sugar.

Video

You can also coat your doughnuts with sugar glaze.

Recipe sugar glaze for doughnuts:

Mix 150 g powdered sugar with 2-2.5 tablespoons water or lemon juice or lime juice.

Dip the cooled doughnuts in the sugar glaze or brush on the glaze.

Note about the white border:

The doughnut is usually filled after baking these days.

I do it differently in the recipe above because not everyone has a syringe for filling.

The doughnut without filling is lighter in weight and therefore floats a little higher on the surface from the frying fat when fried.

This creates the white edge that you know from store-bought carnival doughnuts.

2. Nutritional Values

3. Tips for Making Donuts Yourself

You will find the exact ingredient quantities in the recipe.

Here in this paragraph I have summarized the most important tips with photos.

Flour and yeast for donut yeast dough
Prepare the sifted flour in a large bowl and mix in the dry yeast.
Prepare the donut dough
Please work with room-warm ingredients, the doughnut dough then succeeds better!
Risen yeast dough in a warm mixing bowl.
After mixing with the kneading hoes, let the dough rise in a warm place. Tip: Oven with the light on has proven successful.

4. Information on German Krapfen

In Berlin, the donut is called – Berliner Pfannkuchen or in short form:

Berliner.

Generally, Pfannkuchen in East Germany is understood as the donuts prepared from sweet yeast dough in floating fat.

In Austria and Tyrol, as well as in southern Germany, the Krapfen are also known as Faschingskrapfen.

In Hessen, the sweet balls are called: Kräppel, Krebbel or Kreppel.

In the Ruhr area, in the Sauerland and in the Lower Rhine region, the outdated name Berliner Ballen is still used.

In Baden-Württemberg, the Palatinate and Saarland, the donuts are also called Fastnachtsküchle or Fastnachtsküchelchen.

Definition German Krapfen: The donut is a boiled pastry about the size of a fist made of sweet yeast dough.
The Krapfen is fried floating in fat. The Krapfen filling consists of jam.
Sometimes the donuts are also covered with glaze, but most often dusted with powdered sugar.

German Donuts Krapfen description of chef Thomas Sixt

5. More Ideas for Baking

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