Browned Butter Glazed Cinnamon Donuts

It’s Sunday night. Day 10 of my 10 day vacation, which means back to dreaded reality tomorrow. I think I might coat myself in sunscreen tomorrow morning and swap out my desk chair for a beach chair, just to help ease the transition. I’ve been laptop free for over a week. I turned my emails off of my phone, and didn’t even  bother to check my emails. Because let’s be real. The only people who really needed to talk to me last week, were either down the Cape with me, or I get text messages from every day.

If you follow me on instagram (@thesaltedcookie) you probably already know everything that I did, and baked, and ate the past two weeks. I baked a lot. My mom took me to this cookware store in Brewster – The Cook’s Shop – where I basically acted like a 4-year-old in a candy store hyperventilating over all of the choices. Usually I smile like a normal person, but I was really freaking out in the pic below trying to play it cool in public.

PSo I settled on some mini pie tins, an apron, some new placemats, a new mini cupcake pan, and this baked donut pan. I’m not really a big donut person. Thank god. Because I know what my butt looks like without donuts, so I can’t imagine it would be a pretty sight if I was donut obsessed. But apparently donuts are the new cupcakes, so I need to get onboard with this baking trend and at least try it once. Don’t knock it till you bake it, right? The only real memory I have of liking donuts is as a kid we would get donuts after church when people used to stick around and socialize after church. Plain glazed donuts were my thing. I’m not into the whole chocolate donut or jelly filled, and me and powdered sugar is just not a good combo.

So I started perusing the interweb for donut recipes. Since this was my first foray into the donut making world, I figured I should follow a recipe this first time around and then once I have a good base down, I can start experimenting in the future. So I came across one of my favorite bloggers – Buns in my Oven – and her Browned Butter Glazed Cinnamon Donut recipe.

Now my one word to the wise before trying these — take your time. They actually don’t take long at all to make, under 30 minutes start to finish, UNLESS you are a total spastic headcase and impatient (like myself) and it takes you 3 times to make these donuts correctly because you keep leaving out key ingredients. The first time, I left out baking powder. The second time, I left out sugar. The third time, I triple checked everything and got it right. I blame vacation brain. Being so task + schedule oriented at work, I apparently just turned that entire portion of my brain off for the week. But I can say that the third time they came out looking, tasting, and smelling just the way donuts should.

Donut Batter:

  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk (or regular milk with a teaspoon of white vinegar added)
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons butter, melted

For the Browned Butter glaze:

  • 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 2 tablespoons milk or cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease the donut pan with non-stick spray. In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients – flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt.

Step 2: In a small bowl, stir the wet ingredients togethers – buttermilk, egg, and butter. Mix the wet and dry ingredients with a wooden spoon until fully incorporated.

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Step 3: Full the donut pan and bake for about 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and cool in the pan for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

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Step 4: To make the glaze, brown the butter over the stove and pour into a separate bowl. Whisk in the powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla until smooth.

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Step 5: Dip the donut tops into the glaze. I double dipped mine (because it’s vacation, and I could.)

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This is great and a fast and easy (but super impressive) option for a fresh baked breakfast. You can get these donut pans almost anywhere. I think my next purchase will be the mini donut pan where you can make 12 mini donuts instead of these 6 donuts. I’m excited to try a bunch of different donut variations too.

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Unfortunately for my poor, sugar deprived coworkers, there will be no donuts or baked goods tomorrow morning. I just really was not feeling baking today – probably since it was 90 degrees outside, and even though my house is very nicely air conditioned right now, the whole standing in front of the oven thing wasn’t super appealing. I also baked 8 times more in the past week than I normally do, so I was all baked out. I did attempt a fresh cherry baked good recipe today that just came out looking like gray cat turds, so I decided to chuck that in the trash, and now it’s too late and I’m tired and suffering from some Sunday scaries, so I will do some mid-week donut baking to make it up to them.

So rather than write paragraphs upon paragraphs to explain the past two weeks, I’m going to just post a whole bunch of photo highlights from the past two weeks and give you quick commentary on them. Mentally I’m just not yet prepared for tomorrow. And if we’re being honest, I’ve been binge watching Scandal with my mom, and I really need my nightly dose of Olivia Pope tonight.

My best friend Katie came down to the Cape from Connecticut for the long weekend. We probably have 15 other pictures of us over the years in this exact spot. We do the same things every year per tradition: eat fried seafood at Cooke’s, sit in a beach chair on the seashore (with delicious sandwiches), daytrip to Provincetown, eat dessert Sundae School (every night), binge watch a new TV show, and bike and do outdoorsy things.

DSC_0043One summer Katie biked from Providence to San Francsisco. I am usually winded by the time we hit mile 2. So this year I went Tanya Harding style and tried to slash Katie’s tires so that we would be forced to skip the bike ride and just go to the beach. But of course, Katie found the nearest bike shop and we completed our casual 17-mile morning bike ride.

pPhoto 1We had a hurricane on Fourth of July, which was stupid. Because Mother Nature should know that is the one day of the summer to grace us with her sunshiney presence and keep the winds and rains out of it. Nevertheless, we made the most of the cruddy non-beach day with some baking.

Patriotic browned butter cinnamon rolls in the morning.
photo 1Homemade browned butter chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches when the hurricane hit at night

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The whole fam-bamily was down for the long weekend, which is nice because it’s my mom’s birthday and she loves nothing more than having us all down at the same time .. and smiling nicely for a picture together.

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And then once everyone else left, I got to spend the entire week with this lovely mama. We did lots of things. Some productive, like running errands and cleaning the house. And some less than productive, like binge watching almost 2 full seasons of Scandal. In our defense, some idiot waitress in Hyannis glutened my mom on Wednesday during our girl’s lunch, so I think sitting on the couch for 6 hours after watching Scandal definitely helped her feel better. DSC_0046

On Friday I day-tripped to Nantucket with my favorite Cape friend Jess. Jess and I met almost 10 years ago when we were interning for the Cape Cod Baseball League together, and to this day she is one of my favorite friends. Although our adventures now are much more tame than back in our younger days when we required a lot less sleep. So we took the fast ferry over to Nantucket, did some shopping, had a nice lunch, and then went to Cisco Brewery, which was SO much fun, I highly recommend it for a day trip. We sat outside, did a wine tasting, drank some fresh cold beers and listened to live acoustic music. Not bad for a Friday.

photo 4My friend Stacie came down for the night yesterday, so we tried to soak in as much sun as possible and went out to the Squire at night to people watch. One of my favorite activities. And by people watch, I mean “husband hunt” for me, which still is not going so well. Patience.

I took about 800 sunset pictures the past two weeks. You might find it annoying, you might not. My family finds it annoying when I sing the opening “Circle of Life” song from the Lion King every time the sunset is really red. My mom got this pic a few nights ago, which I think is the winner for sunset pics this summer.

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And finally. I drove back to the city to avoid traffic and run a bazillion errands since I hadn’t been home in a while. Not much has changed around here. Crazy Eddie is still being crazy – and currently set up a trampoline in his backyard next to the fire pit right under the electrical wires. I’m starting to think he’s setting up one of those tough mudder race courses in his backyard. I was already getting some anxiety and Sunday Scaries this morning, so I went to Pottery Barn in Chestnut Hill to sit on the couches. That store is my idea of heaven. I have been looking for a new desk chair for my office and finally settled on this nice upholstered dining room chair from PB. Apart from just finding a new desk, why not consider customizing your office style by opting for office partitions Melbourne? Apparently they were not supposed to sell me the display, but I really was impatient (shocking) and didn’t want to have to order it and wait for it to be shipped, so I convinced them that they really should just let me take it home today and let me use my rewards so that it only cost me $17. I can attest that after sitting it in it for the past hour writing the blog, this was a good purchase. And Tuesday my long-awaited guest room sleeper sofa arrives! So for all of my friends who want to eat some baked goods, I suggest you start putting in your reservation requests as soon as possible.

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Happy Sunday. Fingers crossed I will survive my return to reality tomorrow.