Mini Chocolate Cake Doughnuts - and Home Made Cake Release - Perfect for use with Silicone Moulds

These iced (or chocolate dipped) mini cake doughnuts are really easy to make and a huge hit with kids. My little boy is now 7 years old, and can easily devour several of these as fast as they can be dipped / iced.

 Have a few disposable piping bags to hand to pipe the batter into the cells of your mould - otherwise this ends up a VERY messy job !

HOMEMADE CAKE RELEASE 

First up has to be the easiest and cheapest recipe you'll ever make. This stuff is AWESOME. If you are used to greasing and flouring baking pans, tins and silicone moulds - you'll just love this. IT saves so much time and works like an absolute charm.

Make some homemade cake release and your cakes will never again stick in your silicone moulds. This stuff will keep in jar in your fridge for a good month or two. Just lightly apply inside any baking tin or silicone mould (when making cakes) lightly with a pastry brush. Those cakes will literally just flip out the pans when done.

Mix equal WEIGHTS of plain cake flour, white vegetable fat such as TREX (UK) or CRISCO (USA) and vegetable oil and then mix together with a hand mixer. I find that 75grams of each is a perfect amount and will treat dozens of moulds :-)

I've absolutely always got this in the fridge.

Anyway - here is the recipe for the mini chocolate cake doughnuts. I'll warn you now - you need at least two moulds and the recipe makes tons (around 40)

Prepare your silicone mini donut / doughnut pans but either greasing and flouring or with a very light coating of cake release. If you can't be bothered making your own,  Dr Oeteker does an aerosol one and Wilton's comes in a little bottle. Cake release is so fast and easy for prepping pans.

Place mould on baking tray for support. I can get two of these pans on one tray at the same time.

Preheat the oven to 200deg C / 180deg C fan

Recipe 

1 cup (250ml volume) white granulated sugar

2.1/2 cups of self raising flour *

1/2 a cup of cocoa powder

2tsp of baking powder

2 tsp vanilla extract

300ml milk (warmed)

3 eggs

2 tablespoons of  golden syrup

115g melted butter or use vegetable oil

can be substituted for 2.1/2 cups normal plain (cake flour) plus 6 tsp baking powder

Sieve dry ingredients together, then mix with a whisk to make sure properly combined.

Combine wet ingredients together.

Add wet and dry ingredients together and then mix with a hand or stand mixer just until you have a smooth mix.

Put a disposable piping bag into a small jug or large glass to hold upright and fill 3/4 with the cake batter. Twist the top and then cut off the point of the bag. You can now pipe the batter into the prepared cake pans which is both quick and relatively mess free.

Do not over fill. You want to fill the cells to approx 1mm BELOW the raised part in the centre. This way, your cake doughnut will rise and retain the hole in the centre.

Bake for approx 7 > 8 minutes or until done. Remove from oven and allow to cool for approx 5 mins before turning out

Sarah-Jane Nash - www.siliconemoulds.com - January 2016

Simple Banana, Oat and Raisin Cookies - Recipe

I rattled up a batch of these really simple Banana, Oat and Raisin cookies before work last Saturday morning. They really are seriously easy and quick to make. In despite of this, they are ludicrously tasty and relatively healthy too ! 

Kids visiting with their parents were only too happy to wolf down two or three each. Little hands kept creeping back to the tray for another. They are quite dense and chewy - but not overly so.

We often have overripe bananas that end up in the bin. I know you can freeze them and make them into cakes and ice cream.... but this is so simple with just a few ingredients. I'm sure I'll be making them again soon.

I used my Revolutionary Macaron Mats for ease. A spoonful of mixture into each marked circle produced 45 little banana cookies. This mixture does not spread. Just flatten a little with the back of a fork or spoon.

Ingredients

3 ripe bananas - mashed

2 1/2 cups of porridge oats

1/3 cup oil

1 cup of raisins

100g crunchy peanut butter

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup of golden syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat fan oven to 175 deg C

Literally just mix all of the above ingredients together and sit aside for 15 mins or so whilst the oven preheats.

Spoon on to trays lined with silicone baking sheets - or alternatively on to macaron mats.

Bake for approx 15 mins until golden. Allow to cool on a wire rack and then serve.

Sarah-Jane Nash - www.siliconemoulds.com - January 2015

Mini Doughnuts / Donuts (by the bucketload !)

I've stared playing with some of the new moulds that have arrived in an effort to start getting photos, measurements and recipes online. There are SO many to do that it's going to be quite a task !

I must say, I've always been sceptical about doughnut / donut moulds - after all, aren't the best doughnuts deep fried ? I'd never given baked ones a second thought. A couple of months ago, I made some mini jam doughnuts which I've yet to blog the recipe for. Very good they were too - but an awful lot of faffing around to be honest.... I found a recipe online at www.allrecipes.com for cake doughnuts and have modified it a fair bit.

I'll warn you now. These doughnuts (UK spelling!) are paler coloured. They're surely healthier - but a bit denser in texture than the yeast risen kind. They DO taste just as good and are easy enough for young children to help bake along with mum. This recipe makes LOADS - 40 infact, but they are small and disappear fast.... especially if your kid wants to take them to nursery with him / her as Oliver did ! It should be very simple to half the given quantities.

Oliver and I made 3 variations from the one base recipe - rolled in cinnamon sugar, dipped in pink icing and dipped in coffee and maple syrup icing. All were superb ! If you try them without rolling in sugar or dipping in icing, you will find they are not very sweet. Given we're coating the outside in copious amounts, the inside doesn't need to be overkill on sugar too.

The 8 cell Mini Donut Silicone Bakeware mould is now available here : http://www.siliconemoulds.com/cell-mini-doughnut-baba-details-follow-p-411.html

Thanks goes to John Masters who helped me photograph these and also did some taste testing (he was the one holding a half eaten mini doughnut below !) Hope you enjoyed them John !

Prepare your silicone mini donut / doughnut pans but either greasing and flouring or with a very light coating of cake release. Dr Oeteker does an aerosol one and Wilton's comes in a little bottle. Goes a long way - and both are fast becoming by friends. Cake release is so fast and easy for prepping pans.

Place mould on baking tray for support. I can get two of these pans on one tray at the same time.

Preheat the oven to 200deg C / 180deg C fan

Recipe 

1 cup (250ml volume) white granulated sugar

3 cups of self raising flour *

2 tsp vanilla extract

300ml milk (warmed)

3 eggs

2 tablespoons of honey

115g melted butter or use vegetable oil

can be substituted for 3 cups normal plain (cake flour) plus 4 tsp baking powder

Spoon some batter into each cell. Go easy ! You want to fill to just BELOW the centre section - a little LESS than 1/2 full. First couple of trays, I had a tendancy to way overfill.

You only need a small amount of batter per cell - about a dessert spoonful. I spooned it in and then used a damp finger to level it in the cell and expose the raised bit in the centre to ensure it was not covered over.

Bake in the oven for 9 > 10 mins. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for just a few minutes - long enough to firm up a little... then simply flip the mould over and turn them out.

If you have over filled them, you only have holes about half way through. My first 16 (two trays) were like that. No problem - easy and quick to fix. Oliver was quite happy to stamp out (and devour) the middles using an apple corer.

To toss in cinnamon sugar : mix 1 tsp ground cinnamon with 100g of caster sugar. Brush each donut with melted butter and roll in the cinnamon sugar

To ice : Mix icing sugar with a little boiling water into dipping consistency. Needs to be quite thick. Can easily be flavoured and coloured. For the coffee and maple glaze, I used 1tsp espresso powder with a tiny bit of boiler water and a table spoon of maple syrup. The pink ones were not flavoured.