Donuts (fried)

This is my first attempt at fried donuts. I am rather pleased with the result, but lazy me did not bother making the glaze, but instead dumped the fried stuff all into a ziplock bag with sugar and tossed them about to coat them.

I found this recipe through Camemberu's blog and have been wanting to try it all of last week, but I was out of sugar, and when I finally got the sugar, it was the weekend thus busy as usual. Instead of the original recipe, I halved it and still got at least 12. Her original recipe using 6cups of flour which yielded 12 jumbo donuts, but so did my 3 cups, except they were not jumbo. I would half it again if it's just for the 3 of us at home.

DONUTS (makes 12 or more)
----------------------------------------------------------------
3 cups plain flour
3 teaspoons instant yeast
3/4 cups warm milk
A pinch of salt
1/4 cup sugar
50g butter
1 eggs
Vegetable oil (for frying)

Honey Glaze
1. Honey
2. Sugar
3. Vanilla essence
4. Water
5. Butter

METHOD
1. Mix the butter, sugar, eggs, salt and milk on slow speed until smooth. I did this manually.

2. Mix instant yeast with about two cups of flour, and add that to the first mixture till you obtain a paste-like texture.

3. Add the remaining 1 cup flour and manually mix and knead till a soft elastic texture is obtained (add more flour if it's too wet).

4. Place the dough in a greased bowl and cling wrap the top.

5. Set it aside in a warm place for about an hour and the volume should double.

6. With a rolling pin, roll the dough (using copious amounts of extra flour if it's too sticky) into sheets of about 1/2 an inch in thickness.

7. Using cookie cutters or a donut cutter, cut out the donut shapes.

8. Line them up on a lightly greased tray prior to frying.

9. Leave them to puff up even more for 30-60 mins (or until desired risen size)! Some crazy yeast at work here! See how big they've become?

10. Meanwhile, make your glaze (no fixed proportions here - this I found tricky)
a. Melt some butter in a pan
b. Stir in sugar and honey till desired flavor is obtained
c. Add a few drops of vanilla essence
d. Add water and stir on low heat until desired viscosity is achieved

11. Heat oil on medium heat, test the temperature first by sacrificing one of those donut centers.

12. Fry each donut for about 20-30s on each side (they cook very quickly!)

13. Set aside donuts to cool and excess oil to drip off (they won't pick up the glaze if they're too greasy or too hot)

14. Dip one side of each donut into the honey glaze and serve warm!

For me, I omitted the above and simply used castor sugar to coat.