What to bake this weekend: Mini ricotta doughnuts with pistachio and honey topping

While the dough for these mini doughnuts takes time, the rise period is very short and they don’t need a second rise. This means you can go from pulling out the ingredients to yummying them up in under an hour.

Mini ricotta doughnuts with pistachio & honey

Ingredients

• 185g ricotta, plus extra to serve
• 2 large eggs
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 90g plain flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• pinch of salt
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• vegetable oil, for frying

To serve

• 3 tbsp caster sugar
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon, or to taste
• ricotta or thick yoghurt
• a handful of chopped pistachios
• runny honey

Method

1. Beat the ricotta, eggs and vanilla extract together until smooth. Add the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and cinnamon and continue to beat to form a batter – you want a thick “droppable” consistency. Leave to rest for 5-10 minutes.
2. For the coating, mix the sugar and cinnamon together in a shallow bowl. Taste and add more cinnamon if you like.
3. Pour vegetable oil into a large, wide frying pan, to come to a depth of a few centimetres. Heat it to 180ºC.
4. Use 2 teaspoons to shape rounds of batter and drop in the hot oil, making sure they aren’t touching each other. Do this in about 5 batches of 5-7 doughnuts per batch – you don’t want to overcrowd the pan or the temperature will drop and the doughnuts won’t crisp.
5. Fry for 3-4 minutes, until you can see a golden colour appearing on the side, turning them at this point to keep the colour even. Make sure they are cooked all the way through (remove one from the oil to test by cutting it in half), then remove and drain on kitchen paper, and repeat until the batter is used up.
6. Roll the warm doughnuts in the cinnamon sugar. Spoon a dollop of ricotta or yoghurt on to each plate and top with the chopped pistachios and honey. Serve with the warm doughnuts.

Extracted from Round to Ours by Jackson & Levine (Quadrille). Photography by Kristin Perers.