Life’s A Beach…Ball Donut

It’s totally Summer weather here now, which means pool time, popsicles, and for me, beach ball donuts! It’s not always easy for me to get down to the beach, so I’m bringing the beach to my apartment. I’ve been meaning to make these for a while now, and I knew it was time when I found the perfect miniature flamingos on Amazon to use as props. Amazon Prime is basically my best friend/savior, I should be the spokesperson I use it so often. 

Anyways, these donuts might be my favorite to style to date. My boyfriend made that palm tree for me and I crushed up some graham crackers for sand. It made me wish that real beaches were made out of graham cracker sand! So unrealistic, but so fun to dream up! 

Ingredients for the fried donut dough:

-1 1/2 cups milk
-1/3 cup vegetable shortening
-2 packages of instant yeast
-1/3 cup warm water (95 degrees F)
-2 eggs, beaten
-1/4 cup sugar
-1 1/2 teaspoons salt
-1 teaspoon nutmeg
-23 ounces of all-purpose flour
-1 gallon of vegetable oil for frying

Ingredients for icing:

-1/4 cup milk
-1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
-2 cups powdered sugar
-Food coloring in pink, blue, and yellow

For the dough:

Place the milk in a medium saucepan and heat over medium until warm enough to melt the shortening. Pour milk over shortening and set aside.

In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water and let dissolve for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, pour the yeast mixture into a large bowl and add the shortening mixture. Add the eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and half the flour. Combine. Add the remaining ingredients and beat until dough pulls away from the bowl and becomes smooth. Transfer to a well oiled bowl, cover, and let rise for 1 hour.

On a well-floured surface, roll out dough to 3/8 in thick. Cut out dough using a circle cookie cutter. For the donut hole, I used a glass bottle opening and offset the hole to one side to make it look more like a beach ball (see illustration). Set on floured surface, and let ride for 30 minutes more.

Preheat the oil to 365 degrees F. Place the donuts into the oil and cook for 1 minute per side. Let cool 15 minutes before decorating. 

Since I do most of my baking in the middle of the night, taking how-to shots isn’t always easy, so you’ll be seeing a lot of these little illustrations appear in the how-to sections of my posts. My best friend did these ones for me, but I’d love to have guest illustrators do printables and illustration collaborations with me in the future! I might even try my hand at some drawings!

Now, who’s up for making these for your next pool party with friends or to give to the kids as a Summer treat? I know I’ll be making these a lot more before Summer’s over! For now, I’m off to re-fill my lungs with air after inflating 20 beach balls for this post, whew!