- Yield: 6
Baked Lemon Poppyseed Donuts
This weekend started with a disaster. A while ago a bought a whole bag of lemons which I could never use all up in time. So I zested and juiced most of them. Lemon zest can be stored easily in a jar in the fridge when you mix it with some granulated sugar before. Having all this juice and zest, I was craving a good old-fashioned lemon pound cake. Looking for recipes, I came across one for a lemon and buttermilk pound cake and started making it. For various reasons (too small pan, wrong fat/flour ratio), the whole thing bubbled over and turned the oven into a disaster zone.
So I had to redeem myself of course, and that's how these baked donuts came into existence. They are very loosely based on a recipe for brown butter donuts with pistachios from Joy the Baker. The brown butter adds a little nutty flavor that works surprisingly well with lemon and poppyseeds. See for yourself and try it!
You don't have to make donuts, you can use the same batter to make cupcakes. The baking time goes up slightly, probably around 15 - 20 minutes.
Ingredients
- All-Purpose Flour - 1 cup + 2 tbsp
- Poppyseeds - 2 tbsp
- Baking Powder - 3/4 tsp
- Baking Soda - 1/4 tsp
- Salt - 1/2 tsp
- Granulated Sugar - 1/3 cup
- Lemon Zest - 1 tbsp
- Large Eggs - 1 whole
- Buttermilk - 1/2 cup
- Lemon Juice - 2 tbsp
- Browned Butter - 2 tbsp
- Glaze
- Powdered Sugar - 1 cup
- Brown Butter - 1 tbsp
- Lemon Juice - 1 - 2 tbsp
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350° Fahrenheit and lightly spray your donut pan with non-stick spray.
- In a mixing bowl, combine sugar and lemon zest. Rub with your fingers to infuse all the essential oils from the zest into the sugar.
- Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and poppy seeds to the sugar, and combine thoroughly.
- To brown butter, put it into a small saucepan over medium high heat and let it melt. It will bubble and be pretty noisy while all the milk solids and the water cooks off. Once it becomes quiet, be very observant. The butter browns very quickly and can go from brown to burned in very little time. As soon as the butter has a nice and strong nutty flavor and you see browned bits at the bottom of the pan, transfer it all to a bowl to stop the browning process. Let cool slightly. You probably need 5 - 6 tbsp of butter to yield 3 - 4 tbsp of browned butter, depending on the quality of your butter.
- Mix egg, buttermilk, lemon juice, and brown butter.
- Add all the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients at once and stir to combine but don't overmix.
- Fill the dough into a piping bag to fill the donut form (or use a spoon to do that).
- Bake for 10 - 12 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Take out, let cool in the form for 10 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.
- While they're cooling, make the glaze by mixing butter and lemon juice into the powdered sugar. Be gentle on the lemon juice and add more as you go. You want the glaze to be pretty thick and spreadable, not runny.
- Glaze to donuts and sprinkle with poppyseeds.
