Maharaja Chai Oolong Tea Cruller Doughnuts with Spiced Apple Cider Glaze
The landscape has gone wild with its color palette. From the horizon, the forests are ablaze with jewel tones and look absolutely breathtaking. The panorama is covered in a crust of perfectly golden, crackled puff pastry: flaky with laminations and smeared with auburn cinnamon butter.
...Well. Less poetically, the ground also looks like it's covered with giant soggy cornflakes. Sad, soggy cornflakes.
...There, I said it.
I guess it doesn't help that Montreal skies are also mostly ghost-grey these days. Amidst block-long inflated construction pergolas and shedding trees, our streetscape is a little shabby miserable.
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| Stones, flakes of gold & jeweled tones |
On the flip side, I went hiking in the Adirondacks 2 weeks ago, and on the trails the scenery is just so, so lovely. There is a crisp, earthy and dew-heavy sugar maple and American beech scent that permeates these mountain lanes. Juxtaposed against the blue canvas overhead, their foliage glows, filigree, and their fiery hued shadows press one leave on another, layer upon layer. It's the stuff of fairy tales: trekking through the most ephemeral aurous sanctuary. The hike up took a good 1h45~ ish, with a couple of huff-and-puff breaks and meeting sweater-snuggled terriers on the way. As we got closer to the top, pocket-sized cairns started to mark the way, solemnly raised next to their much more precarious-looking, pointy rock brothers. And then! From the peaks, the trees are all a-flicker, like nighttime city lights. Soft and fluffy night lights, slightly fog-tinted.
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| Look at that foliage! |
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| View from the peak of Mount Cascade, Lake Placid afar. |
Mount Cascade is a popular spot in the Adirondacks, and hence was a little crowded. But understandably: it's such a nice place to take a breather from everyday work and downtown's traffic backlogs.
The way down was a tad rougher since we all forgot to bring snacks. I think there was only one bag of Fuzzy Peaches portioned among us 8, and it got passed around like manna.
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| Maharaja Chai Oolong Tea Cruller Doughnuts with Spiced Apple Cider Glaze - Nom! |
On that note, here's a fall-infused recipe: warm and cozy morsels of apple cider flavor and the cinnamon-spiced blends of chai tea, all embedded in the best kind of doughnuts: crullers.
I had initially tried to add minced apples in the batter, but the chunks were still too big to pass through the tip and piping became an absolute pain. ...So no apple bites. That being said, my favorite thing in this recipe is probably the spiced apple cider glaze. The apple flavor surprisingly shines through it, so it makes up for the removal of fresh apple.
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| I really like those grooves. |
And what about the tea? Ohhh, the tea!! The blend I used actually comes from Teavana, and they usually hand out tasting samples of it mixed with their Samurai Chai Maté. Both tea blends are quite robust and heady in scent, so I only used one at the time. Cinnamon, cloves, ginger, carob. Perfect to fall in love with this cozy season.
...Awwwtumn.
... see what I did there? (:3) heh.
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| Cruller doughnuts in the making! |
Servings: 14 x 3 inch (8 cm) cruller doughnuts
Ingredients:
Mahajara Chai Oolong Tea Crullers:
Adapted from Use Real Butter
1 cup Maharaja Chai Oolong tea (or your favorite brand of chai tea), steeped for as long as you want the flavor intensity to be - I steeped mine for the standard 4 minutes
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons Mahajara Chai Oolong-Infused butter (recipe to follow)
2 teaspoons white granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 egg white
Mahajara Chai Oolong-Infused Butter:
(Makes 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons infused butter)
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon butter, unsalted, softened (some butter will remain stuck to the leaves and you'll end up with the right amount)
3 tablespoons Maharaja Chai Oolong tea (or your favourite blend of chai tea)
Spiced Apple Cider Glaze:
2/3 cup apple cider (I used the Traditional (R) brand)
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 cups powdered icing sugar
Large star nozzle piping tip (I used Wilton #1M)
Pastry bag
Vegetable oil for frying (I used sunflower oil)
Metal tongs
Large slotted spatula
Preparation:
Pre-cooking:
1. Prepare a couple of parchment paper squares (large enough to fit the diameter of your crullers). If you want, trace 3-inch circles on the parchment paper before cutting the squares out.
2. Lightly brush each square of parchment paper with a bit of oil.
3. Leave aside until needed.
Mahajara Chai Oolong-Infused Butter:
1. In a small saucepan, put the softened butter and the tea leaves. Turn the heat on to medium-low.
2. Heat the mixture until the butter is completely melted and turn the heat down to low.
3. Let the tea infuse the butter, still on low heat, for 5-10 minutes. The butter shouldn't be simmering.
4. Remove from heat and let stand an additional 10-15 minutes. The butter should be nicely tinted (and smell amazing) by then.
5. Pour through a sieve and, using the back of a spoon, press on the tea leaves to extract as much butter as possible.
5. Pour into a small bowl, cover and refrigerate until the infused butter hardens (min. 2 hours).
Mahajara Chai Oolong Tea Crullers:
1. In a medium saucepan, put the brewed Maharaja Chai Oolong Tea, the infused butter, the white granulated sugar and the salt.
2. Bring to a boil on medium-high heat and let simmer 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the flour all at once, and stir rapidly and briskly with a wooden spatula until a smooth, soft dough ball forms. Try to remove as much moisture as possible - it will create a lighter pastry. When a thin film forms on the bottom of the saucepan, the flour mixture is ready.
3. Remove from heat and transfer to the bowl of your stand-mixer. Hook up the paddle attachment and stir the dough for 5-7 minutes (on "Stirring" speed), or until the bowl is barely lukewarm to the touch.
If the dough is still too hot when you add the eggs, they'll scramble.
4. Increase the mixer speed to medium. Then, add the eggs one at a time. Wait until the previous egg has been completely incorporated into the cruller batter before adding the next one.
5. Add the egg white. Keep mixing until your cruller batter becomes smooth and glossy.
6. Fit a pastry bag with a large star nozzle. Fit the bag into a tall glass for support and spoon the cruller batter into it.
7. Pipe a ring of cruller batter on each square of parchment paper. Repeat until you run out of batter.
Frying:
1. Prepare the frying oil: In a large, tall saucepan (I use a stockpot), pour enough vegetable oil to have 1.5-2 inches of depth. The rule of thumb for deep-frying is for the oil to submerge half of the food you intend to fry. As for the pot, try to get the walls to be ~10 cm higher than the surface of the oil to avoid burning splatters.
2. Heat the oil to 370 degrees F, then turn the heat down to medium-low to maintain that temperature. Holding a corner of the parchment paper, lightly slide the cruller, paper-side up, into the oil. After ~1 minute, use the metal tongs to loosen the parchment paper and discard it. Fry for an additional 1 min.30 -2 min. on that side (or check when the surface is nice and golden), and flip the cruller over. Again, fry for ~1 min30-2min.
3. Remove the cruller from the oil with slotted spatula and drop on paper towels to drain. Repeat frying process for all cruller donuts.
Spiced Apple Cider Glaze:
1. While the crullers cool, prepare the glaze.
2. In a saucepan (large enough in diameter to dip the crullers), put the apple cider, the cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and icing sugar.
3. Cook on medium heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar has completely dissolved.
4. Remove from heat and let cool ~10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Glazing:
1. When the crullers are cool to the touch, dip the top of each of them into the glaze (or submerge it, that's fine too).
2. Leave on a rack until the glaze dries. It won't be a thick, hard glaze, but it will be dry enough to pick up without a string of sugar pulling away from your fingers.
3. Nom!
P.S.: These crullers are best eaten the same day, especially if they have been glazed. The ones I left overnight were soft and sad in the morning. I have also frozen a couple, but haven't tried them yet so I'm not sure how effective that storage method is.
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