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The Easy Way To Bake Doughnuts Without A Doughnut Pan

The lack of a doughnut pan doesn't have to mean a dearth of doughnuts if you possess the ingenuity of MacGyver and a few MacGyver-worthy tools, namely a muffin tin and some tin foil. You'll fashion these items into a bonafide doughnut pan that will be sturdy enough to hold your doughnut batter and inexpensive enough to allow you to experiment with different shapes and recipes.

The process is both straightforward and a bit rudimentary, so it's easy to replicate. To start insert rolled up pieces of tin foil into the muffin tin cups. They should be cylindrical in shape and tall enough to peek out over the top of the muffin tin. One foil cylinder goes into each of the muffin cups. They should stand upright by themselves inside of each cup. If they don't, try to flatten the bottom of the cylinders a bit to give them more of a base to stand on, so to speak. Once you've made the foil cylinders, spray the cooking oil onto the foil cylinders and inside the muffin cups until everything is coated well. If you've done this correctly, you'll have replicated, in principle, the design of a doughnut pan (like this one from Bellemain on Amazon). The foil cylinders replace the raised centers that doughnut pans have but that your muffin tin doesn't.

Baked doughnut recipe ideas and tips

It's best to use a cake doughnut recipe instead of a yeast doughnut recipe for this. The difference between a cake doughnut and a yeast doughnut is which ingredient makes them rise. In the former case, you'll be working with yeast. In the latter case, it's baking soda that you'll need. As such, you'll need to pipe the cake doughnut dough into the MacGyvered pan once you get it constructed, taking care to get the batter in and around the foil cylinders. This is what forms the doughnut holes. 

Once you're ready to bake, you'll follow the directions of your recipe of choice. While the particulars vary between recipes, you'll typically need to set your oven to around 350-400 degrees Fahrenheit for between 8-10 minutes to cook the pastries thoroughly. Once your doughnuts have baked, they need to sit out to cool on a wire rack. Because they'll have a removable part (the foil cylinder in their center) they need to be cooled and fully formed before you can push the foil out of the doughnuts' center; otherwise, you'll tear up the doughnuts. 

They'll be plain coming out of the pan and ready for your take on a coconut glazed cake doughnut recipe, unique chocolate frostings, or other toppings and ingredients that your doughnuts can't possibly live without, plus a little restaurant quality hot cocoa with whipped cream to dunk 'em in. The doughnut's the limit, so get to dunking.

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