Sugar Ring Donuts

 

Now, after seeing and hearing so much about Cronuts recently, I really wanted to give them a go. I trailed the internet looking at different recipes trying to decide which one to use, and in the end settled on this one. I followed the recipe word for word, but when it came to leaving them to rise after cutting out the donuts, they didn't puff up like they should. So admittedly, my Cronut attempt did fail, but that said, this recipe still makes amazingly light sugar ring donuts. Has anyone else found a foolproof Cronut recipe that I can try?
 
Ingredients:
60ml whole milk
65ml water water
6g dried yeast
150g cold butter, cubed
125g plain flour
125g strong flour
30g caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Sugar to coat
Bowl of icing sugar
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Dessicated coconut to decorate
 
In a large mixing bowl, whisk the milk, water and yeast together and leave to one side for 5 minutes.

In a smaller mixing bowl, rub the cold butter and flours between your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs but still has a few bigger lumps of butter.
Mix the sugar and salt into the flour mix and tip everything into the bowl with the yeast mix in.
Use a spoon to stir it together a little, then use your hands to bring it into a dough.
Cover loosely with clingfilm and leave it to rest for 2 hours.

Once it's rested, roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1cm thick, aiming for a rectangle that is twice as long as it is wide.
Fold the dough into thirds so that the last third overlaps the other two.
Turn the dough through 90 degrees and repeat the process twice more.
Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge to rest for at least 4 hours, or preferably overnight.

Roll the dough out once more, to the thickness of a £1 coin then use cutters to shape your donuts.
Place them on a floured tray and cover with a clean tea towel. Leave at room temperature to rise for another hour.

In a small pan, heat a few centimetres of oil to 170c.
Fry the donuts, a few at a time, 90-120 seconds on each side until puffed up and golden.
Drain them on kitchen roll briefly then toss in sugar before leaving to cool.

Mix enough lemon juice with the icing sugar to create a thick lemon icing, and pipe onto the cooled donuts. Sprinkle with dessicated coconut.