Baked Vanilla Bean & Sour Cream Donuts

While there are foodies who make rounds of the best restaurants in town and raves or rants about what they eat or have eaten- I think the real essence of being a foodie is making good eats and sharing it too. So it comes naturally for me to make extra or another batch or another serving of whatever I prepared at home which I can bring to work or share with friends. It's as if I want to prove that I made something delicious and how are they going to believe me if they haven't tasted it?

Anyway, let me make a little confession before I go further. I am on a little baked donuts phase right now so I decided to make a dozen of the maple ones which I recently made- not just for me but for my friends. But at the last minute, I changed my mind and opted to make something else. Something I haven't tasted. I came across a recipe which I changed a little bit to come up with these delicious donuts.

Baked Vanilla Bean & Sour Cream Doughnuts
Adapted from curlygirlkitchen.com
yields a dozen donuts

Ingredients:
1 cup sour cream, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 extra large eggs, room temperature
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
a pinch ground nutmeg
half a stick unsalted butter, melted
vanilla sugar for dusting (recipe follows)

For the vanilla sugar:
Place 1/2 cup sugar and seeds of a vanilla bean in a food processor.
Pulse a couple of times to infuse the with the vanilla beans and presto- you have vanilla sugar.
I always keep the washed and dried pods in a dry container with sugar so I actually have it more often than not.

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350. Spray a standard cake doughnut pan with non-stick spray.

In a bowl, whisk together the sour cream, sugar, oil, egg, and vanilla bean seeds. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and nutmeg. Add dry ingredients to the wet and stir just until combined.

Spoon batter into a zip-lock bag. Snip an inch off one of the corners of the bag and pipe the batter into the doughnut pan.

Bake for 12-14 minutes until golden and puffy, and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Lightly dip each donut top into the melted butter before putting on the wire rack. This will help the vanilla
sugar to adhere more

Dust the doughnuts with the vanilla sugar and serve warm.

The thing with baked donuts or cake donuts is you can just treat it as muffins or a cupcakes but shaped like donuts. So, I could just think of the most delicious cupcakes or muffins I love and turn them into donuts. And again- no greasy aftertaste in your mouth after munching on one..... or two! And the best thing about it- my friends loved 'em!