Kinako Brioche Donuts

These donuts are made from a no-knead brioche dough, filled with kinako pastry cream, and dusted with kinako sugar. But first…

What is kinako?

Kinako is roasted soybean flour. It has a nutty flavor and is used in Japanese desserts. You can usually find kinako at an Asian grocery store. Up here in Seattle, I found mine at Uwajimaya.

Still confused about some of the ingredients I use? Check out my food glossary for more information.

Back to the recipe – if you’re thinking this sounds too fancy and you can’t do this, YOU CAN! The only difficult part is that this process can be a little time consuming. There are a lot of steps, but the brioche dough is SO EASY. It needs to be prepped at least one day ahead of time, so plan accordingly. The pastry cream can also be made ahead of time and kept in the fridge until ready. You do not need any special equipment EXCEPT I highly recommend getting a food thermometer to keep track of the temperature of the oil.

To make donuts:

Ingredients

• 1/4 batch of dough from Bread in 5’s Brioche Dough Recipe
• Vegetable oil
• 2 cups kinako pastry cream (recipe follows)
• 1 tbsp kinako
• 6 tbsp granulated sugar

Instructions

1. To make 12-15 small donuts, take about 1/4 of the brioche dough from the fridge. You can use the rest of the dough for other brioche recipes (or just make a ton of donuts).
2. Roll out dough to a little more than 1/4 inch thick, sprinkling flour as needed to keep it from sticking.
3. Cut out 3-4 inch circles using a cookie cutter, biscuit cutter, or even the rim of a cup.
4. Cover with a tea towel or saran wrap and let rise at room temperature until about doubled in size, about 30-60 mins depending on how cold your kitchen is.
5. In the meantime, heat about 3 inches of vegetable oil to 350 degrees F on the stovetop, or use a deep fryer if you’re fancier than me.
6. When the dough is risen, fry 2-3 donuts at a time for about 1 minute on each side, until golden brown. I flip the donuts in the oil with chopsticks.
7. Use a slotted spoon (or whatever works for you) to fish the donuts out and cool them on a baking rack or plate lined with paper towel.
8. Mix kinako sugar ingredients in a bowl. When donuts are cool, dip in kinako sugar and generously coat.

For the pastry cream filling, I based my recipe off the Kitchn’s pastry cream recipe. See their page for photos and more detailed instructions on how to make the pastry cream.

Kinako Pastry Cream Ingredients

• 1.5 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 tbsp kinako
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 4 egg yolks
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

Instructions

1. Heat heavy cream on stovetop until warm, but do not let boil.
2. Meanwhile, whisk sugar, flour, kinako, egg yolks, and salt until well combined.
3. Ladle about .5 cup of warm cream into the egg mixture. Whisk to combine. Your goal is to loosen and slightly warm up the egg mixture without scrambling the yolks.
4. Pour entire mixture back into the pot with the rest of the heavy cream. Cook on medium heat, whisking the entire time, until the custard starts to bubble. If your heat is too high, your cream will cook unevenly, causing lumps of egg and/or burnt custard at the bottom.
5. Once mixture is bubbling, keep on the heat for two more minutes to ensure flour is fully cooked.
6. Pour pastry cream into bowl and cover with plastic wrap touching the surface of the pastry cream to prevent it from forming a skin. Cool in fridge.

To fill the donuts:

1. Scoop pastry cream into piping bag with round tip.
2. Use a small knife to pierce a hole in each donut. It doesn’t matter if it’s on the top or the side, as long as the filling will not drip out of the donut.
3. Use the piping bag to squeeze filling into each donut.

Recipe notes:

• There’s all sorts of tricks on the internet to tell you when your oil is the right temperature if you’re not using a thermometer. I, however, do not know any of them.
• You can use any mixture of milk, half and half, or cream for the pastry cream, but you will get varying results in flavor, richness, and color. I have even used non dairy alternatives such as coconut milk and soy milk.
• I do not strain my pastry cream because I’m lazy. But you can if you want to.
• If you don’t have a piping bag, you can always serve the cream on the side or cut the donuts in half and make a pastry cream-donut-sandwich.
• I’m not very precise with filling the donuts, and I don’t have a trick for knowing how much pastry cream to pipe in. I mostly just squeeze the piping bag until I see a little pastry cream start to overflow from the donut.
• If you’re intimidating by making the cream and filling donuts, you can still enjoy these donuts unfilled! Simply eat after coating them in kinako sugar!

I know these are quite a lot of steps, and admittedly, deep frying is always a little labor intensive. However, both the brioche dough and pastry cream can be made a few days in advance and kept in the fridge until ready to fry. This is seriously one of the best desserts I’ve ever made. I hope you try it!