Dust these doughnuts with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar.
“This is a popular old-school Korean snack, which I think deserves more recognition – strangely, it is not well known outside of Korea,” says Su Scott, author of Rice Table.
“This could be partly to do with the fact that, more often than not, most recipes call for ‘wet’ rice flour: freshly milled rice flour made from pre-soaked rice.
“In traditional baking, wet rice flour was preferred because of its excellence in retaining moisture, resulting in more moist and chewier rice cakes that keep well. Nowadays, more recipes are being developed using dry flour for the convenience of home baking.”
Sweet rice doughnuts
(Makes about 20)
Ingredients
- 250g glutinous rice flour
- 50g plain flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 40g golden caster sugar
- ½ tsp fine sea salt
- 30g unsalted butter, melted
- 80ml warm full-fat milk
- 150ml hot water, about 80C
- Vegetable oil, for deep frying
For the cinnamon sugar:
- 2 tbsp golden caster sugar
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
Method
- Sift both flours, the baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar and salt.
- In a heatproof jug, combine the melted butter and warm milk. Stir into the flour mix. Gradually pour in the hot water and continue to mix until it resembles rough crumbs.
- When dough is cool, start bringing the ingredients together by gently kneading until the dough feels supple.
- Wrap in clingfilm. Rest in the fridge for at least one hour or overnight.
- After the dough has rested, divide it into four. Work one piece at a time, keeping the rest covered. Shape into a log, then cut into five golf-ball-sized pieces. Combine the sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and line another plate or dish with kitchen paper.
- Fill a saucepan suitable for deep-frying with vegetable oil. It should be deep enough to submerge the dough balls but no more than three-quarters full. Heat to 160°C. If you don’t have a thermometer, a cube of bread should brown in 12 seconds. When it reaches 160°C, turn off heat and carefully lower a few of the dough balls in. Keep the heat off for two minutes. After two minutes, the dough will start to move and float a little. Turn the heat back on and maintain the temperate at 160°C.
- Fry the dough balls, making sure to push them down with a heatproof sieve as they will float. After five minutes, the doughnuts should appear golden brown and cooked through.
- Transfer to the plate lined with kitchen paper.
- When all the batches are cooked, roll them in the cinnamon sugar while hot and serve immediately.
Rice Table by Su Scott is published by Quadrille on March 30, priced £27. Photography by Toby Scott.
