Mochi Donuts
This is a donut recipe for laziness.
Even the spelling—donuts instead of doughnuts—is in itself lazy. Because there comes a point in your cooking life, where you’ll want doughnuts, but don’t want to spend a whole day folding dough, letting it proof, rolling it out, letting it proof a second time, before deep frying it, and giving it final glaze or a dusting of sugar. Well, I’ve been there one too many times. In fact, I was just there this morning.
So, what did I do?
I found a simple donut (sic) recipe that promises to cause “your skinny jeans (to) self-destruct in 30 minutes” from making it, and subsequently eating it, because these donuts are just that good! It’s of course, a recipe from one of my cooking idols, Mandy Lee from Lady and Pups!
And sticking true to Mandy’s unobnoxious, no holds barred, neo-Asian style of cooking (and writing), these donuts are nothing like your regular Dunkin’ Donuts or Krispy Kreme type, because these are mochi donuts!
How are mochi donuts superior—I mean, superiorly lazy—you ask? Well, instead of spending a whole afternoon making them, they can be made within the hour, from start to finish, kneading to eating. Instead of churning the dough in the mixer for dozens of minutes until it reluctantly passes a windowpane test (or worse yet, continuously hand-kneading till your elbows creak), the mochi donut dough comes together in less than 5 minutes. Instead of that temperamental, guestimated dough that requires you to “add more flour if your dough looks too wet” or “add a touch of water, maybe two, if your dough looks dry”, these mochi donuts have a consistent texture just from following the exact ratios in the recipe. And instead of needing rounds of proofing and babysitting, these mochi donuts requires zero coddling, and has zero down-time, all because it uses baking powder as a leavening, and can be fried up as soon as its made and shaped.
All this because instead of wheat flour, mochi donuts uses glutinous rice flour (sometimes also called sweet rice flour). And it’s because of this difference in flour, that gives mochi donuts its characteristic chew. Instead of a yieldingly-bready yeasted dough, mochi donuts are supply chewy and bouncy, kind of like a puffed up mozzarella stick, only a bit breadier and gummier!
For my recipe below, I based it off Mandy’s recipe, made a few tweaks, plus some extra lazy decisions. Because when it came to flavouring these donuts, I veered off Mandy’s glazing path, and opted to toss it through some cinnamon sugar instead. Screw faffing about with boiling a sugar syrup and flavouring it with honey or cardamom, all I wanted was the quickest path to donut decadence, and throwing together sugar and a few shakes of cinnamon powder is waaaay easier.
Well, that was the plan, but when it came time to make the cinnamon sugar, I found out I was all out of ground cinnamon. So instead of going out to buy a new pack, or grinding up some cinnamon sticks that I had, I just substituted it with five-spice powder. Did I know it would work? Nope, but turns out, instead of just the flavour of cinnamon, I got the flavour of cinnamon, star anise, fennel seeds, peppercorns, and cloves all in one here. And with five spices in one, it tasted nearly five time as good too. (Okay fine, maybe more like twice as good.) Sometimes, laziness pays off, eh?
A final word though: I admit it’s hard to definitively say that mochi donuts are superior to a regular glazed Krispy Kreme, because they are quite different. Apples and oranges, no? But instead of thinking of it as some sort of chewy, otherworldly donut, know that mochi donuts have gotten a lot of love in places like Japan and Korea, and recently even in New York!
So trust me, and trust Mandy, for these donuts do have the potential to break your jeans.
Mochi Donuts with Five-Spice Sugar
(Based on Mandy Lee’s recipe)
Makes 10-12
Ingredients
Mochi donut dough
30g glutinous rice flour
40ml milk
230g glutinous rice flour, plus more for dusting
1 teaspoon (5g) baking powder
100g milk
3 tablespoons (45g) butter
50g fine caster sugar
1 egg
Five-spice sugar
60g fine caster sugar
½ teaspoon (3g) five-spice powder, can be substituted with cinnamon powder
Directions
Starter dough: To start, we’ll need a starter dough. Put the 30g of glutinous rice flour and 40ml of milk in a bowl. Give it a quick stir with a spoon, then microwave it for 30-45 seconds on high, until the flour and milk comes together to form a gloopy dough.
Mixing the dough: In a stand mixer bowl, add in all the ingredients for the donut dough. It doesn’t matter what order you put them in, they’re all going to get mixed anyway. (All in the spirit of an extra lazy recipe, eh?) Then, with a dough hook attachment, mix the dough for 2-3 minutes, until it becomes a homogenous, sticky dough. (Start your mixer on low so the flour doesn’t poof up everywhere, then slowly increase the speed to medium-high after a minute of mixing.)
Rolling out: Dust plenty of glutinous rice flour onto a tabletop or work surface. (I use a tablespoon of flour and dust it through a sieve onto my table.) Then, remove the dough from the mixer bowl onto the table. Dust more flour on top of the dough. Then, using a rolling pin or your hands, gently press out the dough into a rectangular shape roughly 1.3cm (0.5 inch) thick, and 15cm x 25cm (6 inches x 10 inches) long and wide. If you feel the dough get sticky at parts, just dust more flour onto the sticky spot. Then, using two well-floured ring cutters, cut out some donuts! (My ring cutters were 7cm (2.8 inches) and 2cm (0.8 inches) in diameter.) Then, combine the excess dough into one ball, and roll it out again to the same thickness, and cut out more donuts. Then repeat the process one last time. (I managed to get 6 donuts for the first round, 4 for the second, and 2 for the third and final round.)
Five spice sugar: In a bowl, combine the sugar and five spice and stir them together until evenly mixed.
Deep fry: Ready a pot of oil around 4 cm (1.5 inches) deep, then heat the oil up to 170°C (340°F). When the oil is up to temperature, gently drop in a few donuts into the oil, careful not to crowd the pot. The donuts will first sink to the bottom, then as it fries and puffs up, it’ll float to the surface. Let the donuts fry gently for 2 minutes, before flipping it over and letting the other side fry and brown for another 1-2 minutes, or until golden brown. When the donuts are done, remove them from the oil onto a wire rack.
Sugaring and eating: While the donuts are still warm, toss them through the five spice sugar until they’re well coated, and eat them while they’re fresh! If you’re saving them for later, the donuts will turn slightly denser and chewier when it’s cool, but nothing a little toaster oven reheating won’t fix!