Copycat Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Donuts

Hi guys! So in this Instructables post, I will be sharing with you my copycat recipe for the one and only, Krispy Kremes. For me, Krispy Kreme is undefeatable. They are basically The God of all american style donuts. Krispy Kreme's is known for their incredibly light and airy donuts and a glaze so thin it flakes away as you eat it. And to emphasize on how light and airy they are, I even measured their weight. And guess what? They only weigh a total of 50g, while the common donut will weigh in about 100g each. Krispy Kreme is not your basic donut no matter how simple looking they may be.

Yes, they are many variation of copycat recipes out there. And many claim that it taste exactly like Krispy kremes. But I have my doubts. And in pure honesty and fairness, even I cannot reach that divine level of airy donuts. There's something about that KK's donut recipe secretly chained up in pandora's box we will NEVER get our hands on. I'm just being blunt here.

And yet! I'm still here because I want to help YOU get that ALMOST same level of light and airy donuts, more than any donut places out there. This recipe will lead you to the best copycat Krispy Kreme donut you can make at home.

I would like to clarify that there will be two variations of the same recipe.

The first recipe will you a very light and airy donut no doubt. This donut will still be really light compared to your typical breadier, chewy counterparts you'd probably find in your local neighborhood grocery store or a 24/7 donut chain. The dough will be easy to handle, easy to cut out and peel from, and a very good recipe for homebakers who aren't obsessive about how much a donut should weigh. But to compare it to Krispy Kreme? It falls a little short I admit. Hence the second recipe.

The second recipe uses the same exact ingredients with different ratios. The dough will be very sticky, and difficult to handle. Best for a more experience home baker who knows how to knead an extremely sticky dough. Yet if you are still willing to venture, by all means.This recipe will give you a significantly lighter donut and gives you that Krispy Kreme's fluffy lightness guaranteed.

So let's proceed!

Luckily enough for me, I live in a state that have a Krispy Kreme outlet open (despite the pandemic), even though I had to drive 40 minutes to get them. But for you and for research purposes, the time was well spent (plus donuts? heck yeah)

Observation:

Color: Light golden brown on top and bottom, with a pale ring around the sides.

Size: 8cm across, 2.5 cm hole, 2.7 cm inner diameter and in height.

Weight: 50grams, across the board.

Glaze: Very thin, waxy and dry to touch.

So now we know more or less about each individual donut, let's get baking!

Roux:

1/4 cup of all purpose flour

1/2 cup of cold tap water

Yeast mixture:

1 and 1/2 teaspoon of fast-rising yeast

2 tablespoon of sugar

1/4 cup of warm water

Mother Dough:

3 cups of all purpose flour

1/3 cup of white granulated sugar

1/4 cup of vegetable shortening

1 teaspoon of salt

2 whole eggs

1/3 cup of warm water

Roux paste

Yeast mixture

Activate your yeast:

Begin my pouring 1/4 cup of warm water into a small bowl containing your yeast and sugar. Stir and let it set aside until frothy.

Cook your roux:

In a small saucepan, pour 1/4 of ap flour and mix in together with your tap water. Mix until it becomes a wet slurry. transfer to a stove top and cook on medium heat, stirring constantly until it forms a gelatinous paste. Set aside.

In a large stand mixer or a large bowl, combined all of your ingredients together including your cooked roux and yeast mixture. If you are using a stand mixer, knead for 10 minutes on medium speed until dough pulls away from the sides.

If you are kneading by hand, use the back of a wooden spoon and stir the ingredients until it forms a rough, shaggy, sticky dough.

Pour your shaggy sticky dough onto an UNfloured work surface. Slowly knead your dough until it forms a smooth silky ball. If you feel like your dough is too sticky to work with, use either benchscraper or sprinkle just a little bit of flour to help things out.

Once kneaded and smooth, transfer your dough ball into a greased bowl and cover it with a saran wrap. Let it proof in a warm, no draft environment for 1 hour.

Once the one hour time is up, moved you bowl into the refrigerator and let it continue to slow rise in the cold. This will alllow your dough to stiffen up a little so it would be easier to roll and cut later.

You will need:

8cm circle cutter

2.5cm circle cutter (for the donut hole)

Rolling pin

Parchment paper cut into 9cm squares

A ruler* optional

Your cold dough

Begin my removing your dough right from the fridge, cold. Remove the saran wrap and punch the dough to rid of the air bubbles.

Flour your work surface with a some dusting of flour and pour your dough out unto the floured surface. Dust a little flour over the top of the dough and your rolling pin. Roll your dough to approximately 1.5 cm thick.

Starting from the edges, cut out your donut circles. Because we are not rerolling the dough, cut out any available big pieces of dough with your smaller circle cutter to make donut holes. Then once cut, transfer your donuts unto the parchment paper squares.

Let your dough rise in a warm, draft free environment for 45 minutes.

I placed my donuts to rise in an oven (turned off) with only the pilot light on.

While we wait for the donuts to rise, we are going to make our glazed.

Ingredients:

4 cups of confectionery sugar

1-2 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup of milk

1 tablespoon of brown butter

Directions:

In a small saucepan, melt your butter and brown it just until it reach light amber. Then remove from heat and pour your brown butter, together with your milk and vanilla into your bowl of powdered sugar. Whisk until there are no sugar lumps.

For an extra silky, lump-free glazed, i strained my glazed through a small strainer. To see if your glaze is ready, dip a spoon into your glaze and let it sit out at room temp for 5 minutes. It should be dry to touch and not sticky. If you feel like it's too runny, add in more powdered sugar (but you really shouldn't need to with this ratio).

When it's ready, cover your glaze with a saran wrap ensuring that it touches the surface. This will prevent the glaze from skinning.

For a mess free donut frying session, it will help if you have a large cookie sheet pan lined with paper towels and a cookie rack to lay your hot greasy donuts. This will help strain any oil from your fried donuts and extra glazed off the bottom.

Once proofed, your donuts should be slightly tall and plump.

In a deep saucepan, pour enough clean, unused vegetable oil. Do not skimp on the oil, it should be deep enough that the donuts can float and not touch the bottom of the pan. Heat your oil to 330 degrees Fahrenheit.

Before placing a donut in there, use one of the extra donut holes and fry that first. It should immediately float and sizzle. If it sizzles too much and browns too fast, that means your oil is too hot. If it sink and does nothing, your oil is not enough. 330F is the perfect frying temperature.

Once your oil is at its correct temperature off 330F, take one of your donut gently and carefully turn it over on to your other hand. Peel the parchment backing and lay into your hot oil Be careful not to dump and splash.

Fry for approximately 2-3 minutes per side til light golden brown. Then transfer unto your rack to cool off for just a minutes.

Continue taking turns frying your other donuts.

While the other donut is frying, glazed the one that is already friend. Contrary to donut rules, glazed your donuts while still piping hot. This will ensure that the glazed will run off and only leave behind a thin layer of glaze. This is how Krispy Kreme's glazed their donuts.

Let them sit on the rack until the glaze hardens and dry.

Be sure to fry the donut holes at the end. They make the perfect tea time snackaroos!

Now, these donuts are already incredible. They are really light and fluffy, unlike the thicker, breadier variety and they taste amazing piping hot. They are the same color and size like Krispy Kremes and that flaky thin glaze that is dry touch? Spot on.

I think if you aren't as anal retentive as me, this would easily pass off as Krispy Kremes..

but..

...it failed the weigh test.

Now, 80g grams is still relatively lighter than any donut. But I'm still not buying the whole idea as a KK copycat. Cut across and we can compare the crumb structure. Krispy Kreme has a larger crumb structure compared to mine, which is tighter. However when shred by hand (or teeth) you can't tell the difference of how the crumb structure looked, they both are extremely fluffy.

So i'm challeging myself if this can be made even lighter, or even come closed to Krispy Kreme's 50g of pure cloud.

Roux:

1/4 cup of all purpose flour

1/2 cup of cold tap water

Yeast mixture:

1 and 1/2 teaspoon of fast-rising yeast

2 tablespoon of sugar

1/4 cup of warm water

Mother Dough:

2 and 1/2 cups of all purpose flour*

1/3 cup of white granulated sugar

1/3 cup of vegetable shortening*

1 teaspoon of salt

2 whole eggs

1/3 cup of warm water

Roux paste

Yeast mixture

*Changes that were made.

Directions:

Follow as it was before.

For the kneading, I advise to use a bench scarper for this as this is an extremely sticky dough. The bench scraper will aid in gathering the dough as you knead. Ensure to knead until it reaches a smooth and silky texture also.

Proofing time is the same.

For rolling, roll it as thin as 1cm in height instead of 1.5cm.

Ensure to dust your circles cutters heavily and completely as the sticky dough will easily adhere itself on the cutter. At first the cut out dough will look a little rough as it's sticky soft nature made it lumpy and hard to handle.

Be sure to proof it for 1 Hour (15 minutes longer than variation 1). The dough will be plump and rounded by the end of the proofing time.

Fry and glaze accordingly, the same as variation 1.

The Variation 2 Krispy Kreme copycat donut is 20g way lighter than variation which is great! Yet still we are still 12g heavier, which I guess it's alright. The crumb structure is also larger and more honeycomb like compared to variation 1, which is a little tighter.

And how about the taste and texture? Really really light and airy. My husband prefer variation 2 better because of it's likeliness to Krispy Kremes. But because of it's flexible nature, I do notice that variation 2 has a small crack at the top. Just a small cosmetic issue i suppose. But other than that, that airy crumb when bitten into is just perfect. I love it.

On days when i'm craving Krispy Kremes, this will be my go to recipe, and I hope it would be yours too ;)

Stay safe and have fun baking my beautiful people <3