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.

(Based on Mandy Lee’s recipe)