Doughnuts and hot chocolate sauce

If you like churros you're going to LOVE this recipe for doughnuts with chocolate sauce from chef Nieves Barragan's new book Sabor*: Flavours from a Spanish Kitchen.

"If you don’t have a mixer to knead the dough you can knead it by hand" she advises. (Note the dough needs an overnight rise)

Makes 20 doughnuts

rapeseed or sunflower oil, enough to fill your pan to about 3cm

For the doughnuts

60g cold but malleable butter

450g plain flour, plus extra to dust

60g caster sugar

60ml whole milk

12g fresh yeast or 4g quick yeast

4 medium eggs

For the hot chocolate sauce

300ml water

150g caster sugar

160ml single cream

50g cocoa powder

300g dark chocolate (70%)

For the cinnamon sugar

150g caster sugar

5-6g ground cinnamon

Take the butter out of the fridge 15 minutes before starting and chop into small cubes

Put the flour and sugar into a large bowl and mix together with your hands

Heat the milk until almost boiling then remove from the heat and leave to cool slightly. Mix into the yeast stirring with a whisk to dissolve

Put the flour and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and slowly add the butter - it will look like crumble. Add the eggs one by one then dribble in the milk/yeast mixture until everything comes together in a sticky dough.

Lightly flour a large container or bowl, turn the dough out into it and lightly flour the top. Cover and leave in the fridge overnight.

In the morning turn out the dough onto a floured surface - it will have almost doubled. Take a piece (approximately 30g) and roll it in your hands then squeeze down until it’s about 2 1/2 cm thick.

Use the top of a miniature bottle to press out the dough in the middle, leaving a hole. The doughnuts should be around 25g each. Repeat until you’ve used all the dough.

Stick two fingers through the middle of each doughnut and move them around to push out the dough a bit more and double the size of the hole otherwise it will close up when the doughnut is fried and expands.

To make the hot chocolate sauce put the water, sugar and cream into a pan on a low heat and dissolve the sugar. Put the cocoa powder and chocolate into a bowl and place over a pan of simmering water to melt the chocolate (this keeps it smooth). When the chocolate has melted add it to the cream with a spatula. Continue mixing until it becomes dense and thick and perfect for dipping. Keep warm.

Mix together the sugar and cinnamon.

Pour the oil into a shallow pan on a medium heat. When it’s hot (about 180°C) fry the doughnuts until golden brown then remove and drain on kitchen paper. Dust with the cinnamon sugar while still warm and serve with the chocolate sauce for dipping.

What to drink: I'd honestly rather have coffee than wine with these delicious doughnuts (because you're going to have them for breakfast, right?) but a glass of sweet sherry would be pretty tasty too.

*Nieves is opening a new restaurant of the same name in London this autumn (2017)

Extracted from Sabor by Nieves Barragan Monacho which is published by Penguin Fig Tree at £25. Photo © Chris Terry.

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