Mini Blueberry Muffin Doughnuts

I'd bought a mini doughnut tray months ago and still hadn’t used it. But I was in the mood for blueberry muffins – what to do?! Why not create a hybrid I thought and these mini blueberry muffin doughnuts were born.

This is really just blueberry muffin batter baked into little circles – so why bother? Well, after baking them I discovered that they are crunchy and crispy all over the outside and soft and fluffy in the middle. Who doesn’t love the hard crusty top on their blueberry muffins? Well, now you can have it all over, because the way the doughnut pan bakes these, ensures good all-round crispiness!

Instead of fresh blueberries, I boiled some frozen blueberries in a saucepan with a touch of sugar to intensify the blueberry flavour. Also whole blueberries would be too big for these mini beauties. Here’s how I made them:

Yield: 80 mini doughnuts!

Ingredients:

125 grams frozen blueberries

1 tablespoon water

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

375 grams self-raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

200 grams caster sugar

125 ml vegetable oil

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

Icing Sugar to dust
adapted from Good Food

Method:

In a saucepan, add the blueberries, water and sugar and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until a thick jam like consistency is achieved – this should take only a few minutes.

Lightly grease the doughnut tray. Pre-heat the oven to 180C. In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and caster sugar. In a jug, whisk together the oil, egg and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix just until combined. Lastly stir through the blueberry mix from the saucepan.

Transfer the batter to a disposable piping bag, or a food bag with the corner snipped off, and carefully fill each cavity in the doughnut pan about half full. 

Place this into the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes or until the mini doughnuts are golden brown on top.

Let them cool for a couple of minutes and then turn them out on to a cooing rack. Re-grease the baking tray and repeat until the batter is all used up. I did this four times as my tray has 20 cavities. In between each bake, place the sealed piping bag up turned in a jug so the batter doesn’t leak out.

When they are all cooled, open a large plastic food bag and add a tablespoon of icing sugar. Fill the bag half full with doughnuts and shake to cover them in icing sugar. Repeat until all the doughnuts are dusted.

And there you have bite-size blueberry muffins in doughnut format with a satisfying crunch crust all the way round! Enjoy…