Seattle Cooking Club

With Cinnamon Sugar, Mascarpone, and Jam

From the moment I read this book, I knew I was going to be making this recipe.  Last time I was at the Dahlia Lounge for breakfast we ordered a batch of these, and they were heaven.  Why not try to replicate on a special morning?

Now, like a lot of items in this book, some advanced planning is required.  There is an initial three hours of rise time, and then resting in the fridge for at least six hours or overnight.

But the promise of a fresh doughnut gets all the workforce out to help.  Your worker bees can work on the vanilla bean mascarpone while you dart around the kitchen taking photos and drinking coffee.

about 20 hours later….

This was the most surprising part of this recipe for me.  I’m normally a mess when rolling or shaping sticky dough, but these doughnuts cut very easily.

We only used half of the dough, and saved the rest for morning two.  Our doughnuts were a bit larger than the specified size- making only six- which was perfect for a family of three.

Lovely though- no?

After another three hour rise and thirty minute chill, they are ready to go into the fryer.

and flip….

perfection.

After the fryer we put ours in a paper bag with the cinnamon and sugar in it.  Fold over the top and shake shake shake.

Cut off the top and VOILA!

Serve with your freezer jam that I’m sure you canned this summer… and the vanilla bean mascarpone.

Perfect texture- but this can’t be beat:

Not surprisingly, the family agreed that we will be making these again- fabulous for a special occasion (with not very many people)

From the Dahlia Bakery Cookbook

I love hazelnuts, so clearly, we needed to make this hazelnut cake.

Last time I toasted hazelnuts, the papery shell didn’t come off- apparently I didn’t do it long enough, because this time, it was no problem rolling them between two towels and it came right off.  Low and slow.  Remember that.

This recipe calls for a lot of hazelnuts all chopped finely in a food processor.

They get added to other pretty basic cake ingredients.  The only thing I didn’t have was semolina flour- which I had used previously, so I’m not sure where that went in my pantry…

Pour everything into a prepared cake pan and bake!

It smells wonderful in the oven.  but doesn’t look particularly spectacular uncut on a plate.

However, sprinkled with powdered sugar and served with some fruit- looks pretty again.

It was pretty delicious.  I also tried it for breakfast a couple mornings and not surprisingly, that was tasty too.  Not too sweet- fantastic nutty hazelnut flavor- This is the sort of dessert that I really enjoy- something that’s the perfect end to a meal without feeling like you are going to convulse from the sugar bomb.

I’ll make this again.