Comfort Food: Glazed Potato Doughnuts with Pistachios and Lavender Sugar

Welcome to Comfort Food. Each week during winter, we’re bringing you a delicious, soul-soothing recipe designed to deliver the sunshine you’re missing in the cooler months—in food form. From the brilliant mind of accomplished recipe developer, food stylist and author Kirsten Jenkins comes everything from an Italian breakfast pizza worth getting out of bed for (yep, even when it’s 4°C) to a banana cake with moreish coconut caramel and black sesame praline. In this instalment, we're serving up gourmet glazed potato doughnuts with crushed pistachios and lavender sugar. Made with day-old mashed potatoes (!), it's the most indulgent method for using up leftovers we've seen. And likely the most delicious. Buon appetito.

Ingredients

¾ cup caster sugar

2 teaspoons dried lavender

1 egg

½ cup of water

25g melted butter

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped

½ cup mashed potatoes

2 cups plain flour

1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

vegetable oil, for deep frying

¼ cup pistachio’s, finely chopped

glaze

1 ½ cups icing sugar, sifted

55g butter, melted

¼ cup water

Method

Place ¼ cup of the caster sugar and the lavender in the bowl. Rub the lavender through the sugar with your fingertips. Set aside. Place the remaining caster sugar and egg in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 3-4 minutes or until light and foamy. Add the water, butter, vanilla seeds and mashed potatoes and beat on medium speed until just combined. Gradually add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and beat until just combined and a soft dough forms. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 hours. Press the dough out on a well-floured surface until 1.5cm thick. Using a floured 8cm round cookie cutter, cut 10 rounds, re-rolling if necessary. Using a floured 3cm round cookie cutter, cut rounds out of the centre of the larger rounds. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat until it reaches 160C. Cook the doughnuts, in batches, for 2 minutes each side or until golden brown and cooked through. Drain on absorbent paper towel.

To make the glaze, combine all the ingredients in a bowl until smooth. Drizzle the doughnuts with the glaze and sprinkle over the chopped pistachios. Allow to set for 5 minutes. Sprinkle over the lavender sugar to serve.

Makes 10.

Into this? Try the Italian breakfast pizza worth getting out of bed for.