If you live in NYC you are hopefully familiar with the Daily Provision’s maple cruller. And if you are not … well allow me to introduce you to my take on their delectable little round of pâte à choux glazed with tantalizing maple glaze. Imagine the delicateness of a croissant, the moistness of a cake, and the flavor of breakfast pancakes. I’ll admit, crullers or even doughnuts in general may sound a big intimidating, but I promise you this is one of the easier, less involved baked good that I have prepared.

This is also a great moment to announce that I will be making step-by-step guides for select recipes, kicking it off with one for this recipe below.

Extra bonus, if you only need the cliff notes, there is a 60 second TikTok version as well, enjoy and bon appetite!

@the.other.beyonce🍩✨ Turning flour into gold with these homemade French Maple Crullers! Who needs a bakery? #HomeChef #MapleCrullers #BakingTok #DessertGoals 🎥💕

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RECIPE

Ingredients

Doughnut Base

• 227 g of whole milk (approx. 1 cup)

• 113 g of unsalted butter (approx. 0.5 cups)

• 1 tbsp granulated sugar

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 130 g of bread flour (approx. 1 cup)*

• 3 large eggs

• 1 large egg white

• Oil for frying (at least several cups)

*If you don’t have bread flour, you could certainly go with all-purpose four. Though the higher gluten content of bread flour is preferable.

Glaze

• 1.5 cups of confectioners sugar

• Pinch kosher salt

• 1 tsp light corn syrup

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 tsp maple extract

• 2 tbsp dark maple syrup

• 2 tbsp hot water
  

Steps

1. Mise en place: Measure out all your ingredients and get your work area ready. As always, I prefer to use a kitchen scale for all the ingredients of the doughnut base.

2. Combine the milk + butter + sugar + salt in a sauce pot and bring it to a boil over medium height. Stir occasionally

   

3. Once boiling, mix in your flour and continue stirring until a firm dough is formed. Remove from the heat.

   

   

4. Transfer the dough to a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat at medium speed until the dough cools to around room temperature (about 5-7 minutes). Do not be alarmed as you see steam escaping.

5. Once cool, continue to beat at medium speed. Add in your eggs (+ egg white), one at a time. Ensure the egg is completely mixed before adding in the next one. You may notice your dough starting to separate, but that is fine. Trust the process! It will all come together in the end. After the last egg is added, you will start to have a thicker and sticky choux dough come together. Transfer this to an airtight container and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

6. While the dough is cooling, we will prepare for the next steps. Heat your oil for frying (360F). Cut 8 square pieces of parchment paper down to 4 in x 4 in. Brush each side with oil OR spray each side with some pam and brush with a pastry brush. Arrange the squares onto a large baking tray.

7. Once the dough has cooled in the refrigerator. Transfer the dough to a piping bag with a star tip (watch my tutorial posted above for tips on how to get the dough into the bag more easily). Pipe a cruller onto each square. To finish a cruller circle, simply come over the beginning end to have a little overlap and lift up and away.

   

8. Once all crullers have been shaped, transfer them into the freezer uncovered. Freeze for 15 minutes.

9. While the little angles are cooling off in the freezer, we can make our glaze! Grab a large bowl and mix in your confectioners sugar + salt + corn syrup + vanilla extract + maple extract + maple syrup. Once the ingredients are roughly incorporated (i.e., it will be very tough). Mix in your hot water and continue stirring until the syrup comes together. You may need to play with adding a little more water to get it to a thick by workable consistency.

10. After the 15 minutes are up, get ready to fry! Depending on your fryer (or pot if you are using that to fry) you will be able to accomdate about 2-3 crullers at time. Slip a cruller into the hot oil upside down (i.e., parchment paper should be on top). The cruller should slip off the parchment paper at which point you can remove the parchment paper with a kitchen tong. Let the doughnuts cook 2.5 minutes on the first side. Then flip and cook for an additional 2 minutes. Finally flip it back once more, and cook for an additional 30-60 seconds. Cool the crullers on a wire rack. Make sure there are some paper towels beneath to catch the oil. Repeat with the other doughnuts.

    

11. After a few minutes of cooling, dip the doughnuts in your glaze and return to the wire rack to let the excess drip off.

12. Enjoy! These are best eaten fresh, but you can also store these in a container left ajar. If they are covered completely, you may find your doughnuts become too soggy.

Introduction

So there are thousands of bagel recipes if you were to fire up Google right now. In fact there are approximately 207,000,000 results as of April 13, 2024. Even more interestingly, there is consistent interest in Google searches for bagel recipes year-round with no clear oscillations or peaks. In the Epidemiology world, this would be what we call looking for seasonality. This is also just one realm of where people search for recipes, this doesn’t include YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok. Before we continue, I’d be interested to know what is your go-to place for looking up a recipe?

The last few weeks I’ve been having more time on my hand during the weekends to start making some of my favorite items from scratch (like I used to pre-grad school days). Bagels have always been on my bucket-list but they seemed like a daunting feat, until I came across this recipe. The recipe below is my adaptation, and given that we are using instant yeast, there is no need for overnight proofing! Therefore, these bagels can come together rather quickly and have started to become part of my Sunday meal-prep for the week ahead.

Recipe

Yields

• 12 NYC-sized bagels

Time

• 1 hour 45 minutes (approximately)

Ingredients

• 975 g all-purpose flour + extra for dusting

• 25 g kosher salt

• 8 g instant yeast

• 672 g warm water (about 110°F)

• 1.5 big teaspoons of honey or barely malt syrup

• Some type of neutral oil on stand by

• 1 egg for an egg wash

• Toppings of your choice (such as everything bagel seasoning)

Equipment

• Large bowl

• Smaller bowls to measure out your other ingredients

• Stand mixer with dough hook (preferable but not a deal-breaker)

• Plastic cling wrap

• Tea towel

• Pot for boiling

• Large baking tray and a second smaller one on standby

• Kitchen scale

• Pastry brush

• Parchment paper

• Baking trays

Instructions

Step One

Gather all your ingredients and kitchen scale. I used to cook without having everything measured and ready to go ahead of time and found this really slows down the entire process and stresses me out when I need to quickly move through steps. So lets not skip this step! You will also notice that I conveniently left out measurements in cups or table spoons and that’s because baking or working with dough really is easier when using actual measurements by weight versus a cup of this or a table spoon of that.

Step Two

Mix together your flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl. If you are using a stand mixer you can use your lowest setting for this.

Step Three

Mix together your warm water and barley malt syrup or honey. Since the latter item tends to be quite viscous and sticky, I drop the measuring spoon into the warm water to really get all of it in there. That’s also why this is the only item we don’t bother weighing out.

Step Four

Slowly pour the water and barley/honey mix into the flour mixture. If you are using a stand mixer, start it on low and work your way up to medium speed for a total mixing time of 90 seconds. If you are kneading by hand, power to you! Keep kneading and mixing until a big sticky ball starts to come together.

Step Five

Take the formed dough from your stand mixer onto a work surface with a light dusting of flour (or you can keep it in your bowl). Cover your hands with olive oil to make this next step easier. Stretch and fold the outer edges of the dough towards the center of the dough. Do this several times until you form a rough ball. Once you have a roughly round (and still quite sticky) ball of dough, transfer it back into a bowl if you were working on a surface. Coat the top and sides of the ball with a little more oil. Then cover your bowl with plastic film so it forms an airtight cover. Let the dough rest and rise for 60 minutes.

Step Six

In the last 5 minutes of the rise, begin to bring a large pot of water to boil. Once boiling, mix in about 1/4 cup of barley malt syrup or honey. In the meantime, also pre-heat your oven at 400F.

Step Seven

Divide the dough into 12 balls that weight about 140 grams each. Then shape each each piece of dough into a rough ball. To shape the balls into bagels, using your fingers push through the center to create a hole. Grab the dough that was pushed through itself and wrap it around the outer edge and back towards the center again. Repeat this for the remaining dough.

Step Eight

Drop up to four bagels into the boiling water-syrup mix and let cook for about one minute per side. Then remove with a slotted spoon or spatula. Place boiled bagels onto a tea towel to rest while you boil the remaining bagels.

Step Nine

Once all bagels have been boiled, brush the bagels with an egg wash (1 egg + 1 tbsp of water) with a pastry brush. Immediately dip the bagel into your favorite toppings if using toppings (such as everything seasoning).

Step Ten

Once your bagels have been brushed and topped, place them onto parchment-linked baking sheets. Given the size of the bagels, you will probably need two trays. Let bake at 400F for approximately 30 minutes. You may want to rotate the tray about halfway into baking to ensure even cooking and browning. The bagels should be shiny and golden brown. Let cool and serve.

Long Term Storage:

• I’ve found these bagels can keep up to a week. They may get a little tough as time goes on, but as long as you toast them for a few minutes they retain their softness.

• I store them by wrapping each bagel in plastic wrap after cooling. Then place those wrapped bagels into a ziplock bag.

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