Samantha Makes Cardamom Cream & Maple-Glazed Doughnuts

Like a warm, cozy hug.

[laughing]

[a man talking to Samantha]

[Samantha laughing]

Of course I do.

[laughing]

Well, it wouldn't be a doughnut.

You didn't get some on you.

[bright upbeat music]

That's fun.

Hello, I'm Samantha Seneviratne, I'm a cookbook author.

I like to focus on baking because it makes me feel happy.

And today I'm gonna show you

how to make cardamom cream doughnuts.

So, that's like a fluffy, delicious doughnut sugar doughnut

filled with cardamom flavored cream

and maple glazed doughnuts.

Doughnuts just dipped in a super sweet,

super glossy delicious maple glaze.

It's not hard.

It's not at all hard.

You have to do some deep frying in your house.

But, I think that deep frying is not as scary as it seems.

It smells a little intense, but I think it smells good.

I also am a mom of a three-year-old

really funny cute little amp, but he's not here right now

which actually makes everything a lot easier.

He's usually running around at my knees

trying to eat everything I'm cooking, which is fun.

Let's get started.

We're gonna make dough.

Okay.

So, the first thing I did was I heated up my milk

in the microwave to like 110, 115 degrees.

Just when you heat it don't go away

because it has a tendency to boil over

and that's really upsetting.

[soft upbeat music]

Oops, and then I dumped in a tablespoon

of active dry yeast, and then just a pinch of sugar

to give it something sweet to eat.

And you can see it's getting all foamy and delightful,

probably only takes like a minute or two.

Now, we can add everything

all our dry ingredients to the stand mixer bowl.

So, I have my all-purpose flour, some kosher salt,

and then quarter cup of granulated sugar

and just whisking it together.

[soft upbeat music]

Oops, it's hard to turn it backwards.

[laughs] Okay.

So, I have made dough hook on there

and I'm gonna add this frothy milk.

And then I'm also gonna add eggs

basically just to make it richer and more delicious.

[bowl mixer squealing]

I don't think you're ever supposed to do this,

put a tool into the mixer,

[bowl mixer squealing]

but I'm doing it just to help the flour, get into the dough.

I'm letting this go for about three minutes

which is building up a gluten little structure

and then I'm gonna add my six tablespoons

of softened butter.

And I'm just adding it in a little at a time

[bowl mixer squealing]

and then we'll let that work itself in and mix it

for like another seven minutes.

The texture of the dough really changes.

It goes from like shaggy and upsetting to smooth and supple

and soft and really nice.

But it always stays a little bit sticky.

So, it resist the urge to add a lot more flour

because that will your doughnuts sort of tough

and breaks the sticky.

[bowl mixer squealing]

[soft upbeat music] Look at that.

♪ Yee, ye ♪

That's why baking is so fun.

Look at this nice smooth dough.

So, this can go now into a buttered bowl

or you can just, if we're being honest

I'll just throw it back into this bowl.

'Cause why dirty another bowl.

Cover this and let it rise for an hour.

We'll set this aside and then we can shape it.

Okay.

Wow!

[laughing]

So, here's my dough,

it rested for about an hour until it was doubled in size,

and then I knocked it out onto a

lightly floured work surface.

[soft upbeat music]

How good does that!

All I can tell you, is I just wanna take a nap on it.

[soft upbeat music]

It's like my son's cheeks, I love it.

So, we're gonna roll this out into about

a half an inch thick.

We're looking to get 12, three inch doughnuts.

Okay, is that about a half an inch maybe?

Yeah, all right.

So, now we're gonna use a three inch cutter

and I have a one, but a one and a half,

one and a quarter inch circle for the middle.

I'm gonna make some holes

because those are the ones I'm gonna fill

with cardamom cream.

I'm gonna make some with rings,

cutout that are going to have a maple glaze.

My grandmother grew cardamom in her garden.

It's like super long and lush and tall, you know.

This bush that comes up and all the cardamom pods

are just at the bottom of the bush.

I don't even know it's menthol

but just sort of a comforting round delicious spice

that goes so well with desserts.

I love it a lot.

Okay, so I have my first batch of donuts cut out

and I'm gonna transfer them to a baking sheet.

I've cut out little pieces of parchment paper

to ensure that if they stick,

I have a way of lifting them up into the oil.

I'm just pinching the scraps together in this weird way

to try to cut more doughnuts.

You could just re-roll it.

I don't know.

I don't want them to be tough.

So, I've made this weird Pangaea-looking mass

and I'm gonna cut out a few more.

I mean, I think my baking style is a real mix of my culture

and my experiences growing up because my parents

well they are lovely cooks, they're not bakers.

All the sweets that we ever had growing up were, you know,

box brownies, cookies from the mall, that kind of thing.

So, I have a real soft spot in my heart

for all those kinds of sweets.

I would happily dig into a Mrs. Fields Cookie Cake.

Just because I make my own doesn't mean

I don't like Starbucks stuff.

All right, these guys are my rerolled frankincense

but I think they're gonna taste better than they look.

We have to cover this and let them rise again

until they're sort of puffy, probably like 30 to 40 minutes.

Let's see what I said in the book.

Let's see what I said. [laughing]

30 minutes to two hours. [laughing]

That's a real helpful time marker.

You basically, you want to watch your dough, not the clock.

You're looking for them to puff up almost double.

When you press them slightly, they should come back slowly.

If you press them and the indentation just falls in

then they're over puffed.

And if you press them

in it Springs right back then they're under puffed.

So, somewhere in the middle of those two things,

you need to look for the signs,

as opposed to just looking at the clock.

That's the lesson. [laughing]

In the meantime we can get our oil heating.

Come into my kitchen.

So, we're looking for 350 degrees on our oil.

Okay.

So, this is the first step of our custard.

I have two and a half cups of whole milk into my pot.

And to that, I'm gonna add two tablespoons

of bashed green cardamom pods.

They like to jump out [laughing], try to escape.

It's like sort of reminiscent of eucalyptus to me,

which is like aroma therapy

which I feel like we probably all need right now.

So now, we just need to bring this to a boil.

None of my stoves work

until you light it the old fashioned way.

There's something so comforting about warm milk.

Hmm!

All right, before this spills over,

I'm gonna turn it off and then we'll cover it

and let that steep infuse all that beautiful cardamom flavor

into the milk.

And then we can use it to make our custard.

And I let that sit for about an hour.

I mean, even 10 minutes is gonna infuse some flavor

but the longer you go, the more flavor you have.

So, and in this bowl,

I have four of the most beautiful egg yolks.

They're like the prettiest color in the whole world.

So, that's gonna make a really pretty custard too.

Into that I'm gonna add some sugar,

just regular old granulated sugar, and some corn starch

and a pinch of salt, a nice pinch of salt.

[soft upbeat music] That together.

And now gonna add a little bit of this milk into the bowl,

all right, into my pot.

This we can cook on the stove

until it's thick and delicious.

Medium high heat.

You wanna a little bit careful

because it can scramble pretty quickly.

It goes from this like lovely yellow river

to a lovely yellow custard.

This process will take six to 10 minutes I would say.

It seems like nothing's happening for the longest time.

And then all of a sudden that happens.

So, I don't ever step away.

I have scrambled so much custard in my life

that I will never walk away again.

Oh, I can feel it.

It just got ever so slightly thicker.

It's happening.

It's happening quickly.

So, now it's starting to thicken up.

I'm gonna get my whisk in there, kind of

way down, 'cause this part too is gonna hold on to heat.

And I really don't wanna sculpt it,

especially now that you're here.

But you can see, look at that.

It got thick so fast.

[soft upbeat music] ♪ Yee, ye ♪

Now it's this luscious custard.

Okay, so it's been a minute.

I'm gonna take it off the heat and go right into this sieve.

And that will get rid of those cardamom pods and seeds too.

She's a little messy.

Put some plastic wrap on this and let it firm up

in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Has to be completely cool

before we put it into our doughnuts.

350, my oil is up to temp.

Yay!

Frying can be our next thing.

[soft upbeat music]

Yeah, let's fry.

Let's do this.

Here are our puffy friends.

[soft upbeat music]

So, we can lift up the doughnuts using the paper

and then we can fry into the oil, they go.

What a day. [soft upbeat music]

Cast iron is kind of my favorite tool.

It also holds on to heat really well.

You just wanna have a couple inches on the side

so that you don't have hot oil splashing around.

And this one has really nice high sides.

And days ago.

I think about two minutes aside,

a homemade doughnut is truly,

it's always gonna knock your socks off.

Look at these puffers.

So happy.

See that ring of white.

To me, that's a good indicator

that they puffed appropriately,

but I want the bottoms to match the color of the top.

[soft upbeat music]

I think these guys might be done.

I'm gonna take these out.

Look at that beautiful ring filling in my whole one.

Keep an eye on your oil cause you might...

sometimes I turn off the heat completely

just to let the temp go down a tiny bit.

Ops!

So, delicate.

[soft upbeat music]

Now temp is going down.

If it's too cold

the dough will sort of absorb more oil than it needs to.

That one got a good line.

Feel good about that one.

♪ Yee, ye ♪

It's for the buddies.

Okay, let's get a couple more.

[soft upbeat music] That one.

All right, so these have sat for a minute.

They're still hot.

The doughnuts that I'm gonna fill with cardamom cream,

I'm also gonna toss in some sugar

and you wanna do while they're still warm

so that it sort of clings to the doughnuts.

Toss a little ones in there too.

Cool. ♪ Yee, ye ♪

I would love to be my local neighborhood doughnut person.

What a lovely moniker is that what that's called?

You also need a lot.

You need some friends, but I have really nice neighbors.

I try to make up because I think we live on the top floor

and I'm certain that we are not the quietest

especially with my little monkey.

I don't know why little kids have

like the heaviest footfalls in the world.

So, I try to keep my neighbors in sweet

so that they don't hate us.

Now we have our frankincense.

They have character.

How can you not love a doughnut?

I kind of wanna cut into one and see.

[soft upbeat music]

Look at that.

It's so fluffy, pure fluff.

Who's gonna eat all these.

[soft upbeat music] Mmmh! I mean.

It's fried dough and sugar.

Now we just have to let them cool completely

before we can glaze them and fill them.

Now we're gonna make the maple syrup glaze

to go on our cut doughnuts.

In this little pot, I have a cup of maple syrup

that I'm basically just gonna cook down by about half

to concentrate the maple flavor.

I also have the heat on pretty low

and I don't want it to heated.

Then I'll take about 10 minutes.

I think we're probably close.

I can smell it.

That's half a cup.

So, now this goes into a cup of confectioners sugar.

So it's just sweet on sweet,

which is why we need to add a little bit of salt.

Make sure it's not too cooing.

Add little milk until we have a nice maple glaze.

She's a little lumpy, but we still love her.

It's gonna taste good.

So, truly who cares.

That's pretty good.

Maple glaze.

How can I not eat this?

I won't.

This is the custard I made and let's show completely.

Look it's totally firm.

Ops!

To that, I'm gonna add some cream.

So, this is a third of a cup of heavy cream.

And I'm gonna just whip this by hand.

It's only a third of a cup so...

[soft upbeat music]

Okay, it's just a little bit basically to lighten up

the custard in a classic pastry cream

you would add some butter at the end for extra

fat richness, but I'm not doing that.

I just want it to be a little lighter.

And I'm going to put this into a pastry bag,

fitted with a tip.

If you don't have a pastry bag

you can just cut the doughnuts in half

and sort of scoop it in like a, an eclair cream puff

or something and sort of eat them that way.

So, I have my custard I have my glaze

and then I have all of my doughnuts.

They look so good.

So, I like to take a chopstick

go into the center and sort of dig out a little hole,

make some room for the custard.

But like I said, you could just slice it,

eat it like a cream puff.

And you stick this in, the key is to fill them.

[laughing]

Let's do a joke.

That's the messy doughnut.

You wanna fill them enough that you get a little cream

in every bite but,

[soft upbeat music]

if you put too much it tends to come out, keep them upright.

[soft upbeat music] [laughing]

Look at that.

They're messy, but they're good.

[soft upbeat music] Yam!

Now, we can do our maple ones too.

I mean,

[laughing]

get out of here, this is so good.

And this glaze should harden a little bit.

I mean, it's going to be a little bit messy

but it'll harden a little bit.

These are my Frankincense.

They don't look perfect, but they look good.

Let's put them on a plate.

Right.

I kind of like wonky ones.

Couple of these guys in there.

[soft upbeat music]

Okay, so I have my finished doughnuts.

These are the maple glaze

and these are my cardamom cream filled ones.

I'm gonna go for a real messy one.

I have a napkin out already.

I want two of my own here, but..

[soft upbeat music]

Pretty good.

♪ Yee, ye ♪

I mean

Can we talk about that?

It's like fluffy and creamy, sugary.

I think also cardamom and dairy just go to work together.

So, so, so, well it's like a hug.

It's like a hug in there.

Like a warm, cozy hug.

[laughing]

How do I not keep eating?

Okay, we're gonna eat the maple ones now.

[soft upbeat music]

That's like the perfect breakfast because it feels,

it feels like pancakes right,

reminiscent of pancakes

but then you get this wonderful crunchy, chewy, bready.

Mmmh!

[soft upbeat music]

Thank you so much for watching

I'm Samantha Seneviratne.

I hope that you'll try these doughnuts at home.

Enjoy

[soft upbeat music]

I desperately need a cup of coffee now.

And hoop!

I just added cream to my glaze,

but you know what no harm done.

[laughing]

Ooh, look at that actually.

I think I just made it better.

That's not gonna taste bad.

Mmh!

Yum, okay.