Cornbread Donuts | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with cornbread donuts. That's right, we are turning my favorite sweet cornbread recipe into donuts and then we will finish them with a fabulous spicy chipotle icing. And these were so good. If you don't serve these for dessert at your next barbecue, I'm not going to be mad, but I'm going to be very, very disappointed. And to get started, let's quickly mix up our dry ingredients, which will include some all-purpose flour, some cornmeal, some salt, of course, and then we'll also need some baking powder and its good friend and drinking buddy, baking soda. And once everything's in there, we will take a whisk and we'll mix this for about 30 seconds until everything is thoroughly and evenly combined. And then we'll simply set that aside while we move on to the wet ingredients. And we'll start that by adding one large egg to a mixing bowl, followed by a little touch of white sugar. And then we'll grab that same whisk we just used. And we will mix this for about a minute or until it becomes nice and light and creamy looking. Oh, and fun fact, in the world of baking, sugar is considered a wet ingredient. And no, you did not need to know that, but now it's too late. And then once the mixture is looking a little something like this, we will stop and add our melted butter. And we will whisk it one more time for about 20 seconds or until it's all been nicely emulsified. And once it has, we will stop and we will add some whole milk, followed by an equal amount of buttermilk. And we will give that another quick mix. And yes, if you want, you can use all milk or all buttermilk, but I think it's better if we use both. And after a brief whisking, we'll go ahead and dump in our dry ingredients. And once those are mixed in, our batter is done. And normally with recipes like this, we are always very careful not to overm mix this once we add the dry ingredients since that can produce a little bit of a tougher, possibly chewier final product. But next time I make this, I will mix this more. And I'll put a note about that in the recipe since the texture was almost too perfect and too tender. And I'll show you what I mean by that later. But anyway, once our batter is mixed, and it's hopefully looking a little something like this, we can start spooning that into our buttered doughnut tins. But I think it's way easier if we transfer that into a piping bag or a zip top bag and we snip off the corner and we use that to pipe it into these rings. All right, that's just going to be so much faster and so much neater. Oh, and the other slight change I'll make when I do these again, which I most definitely will, is I'm going to be way more generous with the butter in these pans. Okay, I only put in a tiny bit. And while they did come out fine, as you'll see, I would have liked them to come out slightly easier and maybe be a touch more golden brown. Right, this was my first time trying a cornbread to donut conversion. So, I was bound to learn a few things along the way. But anyway, once those rings have been filled up almost to the top, we'll go ahead and distribute the end of the batter wherever we think it will fit. And that will bring us to a very important moment. Whenever we're doing something like this and we filled a pen or a mold with batter, we always have to step back and look at it and ask ourselves, should I tap that? And the answer this time is definitely yes. So, we will give that the old tapa tapa, which is going to even out and settle everything down. And that's it. Once those have been tapped, they're ready to transfer into the center of a 375°ree oven for about 15 minutes or until they look like this. And I know those holes did fill in a little bit with dough, but don't worry, by the time we're done, they're going to look perfect. Oh, and speaking of being done, we always want to test these with a toothpick, which should come out clean. And this one did. And then what we'll do is let those sit in the tins for about 10 minutes before we try to unmold them. Since if we've learned anything from George Castanza, is that when things cool, they contract. And while we're not going to see significant shrinkage, these will pull away from the metal a touch and be fairly easy to take out. And what we'll do is transfer those onto a cooling rack and we will let those cool completely before we try to ice them. So that's exactly what I did. And once cooled, I decided to try one out before I iced it. And I picked one that had it kind of cracked a little bit as I took it out. And I'll get to the texture in a second, but the taste was absolutely perfect. And these are still plenty savory enough to eat with chili or barbecue meat. yet. I think they're definitely sweet enough to serve as a dessert, especially once iced. And as far as the texture goes, it was extremely light and very, very tender. But as far as handling these as a donut, it might have been a little bit too fragile, which is why I want you to give that batter a good whisking for about a minute or two. But anyway, that was a very minor complaint. And then before we finish these off, as an optional step, we can push or cut those centers out to give these more of a classic doughnut shape. So that's what I did and I had a nice little snack. And then to make the recommended spicy icing, we will add some ground chipotle to some powdered sugar along with a little bit of freshlysqueezed lemon juice plus a couple tablespoons of milk. And we will start whisking. And what we're trying to produce here is a very thick icing that will hold its shape once we pipe it on the donuts. Which means when we finish whisking, it should almost be too thick to stir. And if we pull the whisk out of the mixture, those ribbons of icing dripping off the whisk should hold a nice sharp shape like you're seeing here. And that's it. You can apply that with a spoon or a knife. But the best method is definitely to transfer it into a piping bag and do some sort of decorative design on the top. And because the cornbread is sweet, I really don't want to put on too much icing. So I went with these fairly well spaced 1970s inspired loops. And by the way, even though we used a good amount of chipotle in this, it's not going to be super spicy since the sweetness kind of cancels out the heat. But if you wanted, you could just do a plain icing or a honey glaze or a maple glaze or a lime and jalapeno icing. So, please feel free to play around. I mean, you guys are after all the king tutts of making the donuts that make people go nuts. But personally, I thought this icing was a perfect pairing. And that's it. will simply let those sit until the icing hardens up, which is probably going to take about a half hour to an hour, depending on the atmospheric conditions of your kitchen. So, I waited for that to happen, allegedly, and I went ahead and grabbed one and tried it out. And that, my friends, is my new favorite doughnut and my new favorite cornbread. And while these do seem a little bit decadent, they're actually relatively light compared to a traditional cakestyle doughnut. So, you don't need to feel too guilty enjoying these, unless you eat four like I did. That made me feel a little bit guilty. But anyway, that's it. What I'm calling cornbread donuts. And just to quickly recap, we're going to grease the tins with a little more butter and we're going to stir that batter for an extra minute or two. But other than those few small tweaks, I thought these were absolutely incredible and I really do hope you give them a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And as always, enjoy.