The lovely people at Party Corps are throwing a fundraiser party for International Pediatric Outreach Project & Heal Africa, to bring physical therapy practice and education to the Democratic Republic of Congo. They asked me to create a simple (and cheap) bite sized treat for the party, preferably an East African recipe. So I’m going with a sweetened up version of Mandazi, basically a spicy East African donut. Today I tested it out on some friends.

I started with a donut dough that I doctored up with some traditional mandazi spices: ginger, cardamom, allspice & cinnamon.

It’s been several hours since grinding it and my kitchen still smells like fresh ground cardamom, which is very much NOT a bad thing.

I let the dough rise and chilled it for a day (mostly because I ran out of time and needed to go to work). Then I rolled it out and stamped little discs.

I fried them up and tossed them with some sugar that was mixed with the spices.

And they were delicious! And so cutsey pie! And we ate all 50 of them! Which we weren’t supposed to do. John showed up and it was “oops” all around. But no worries, tomorrow I get to make 400 of them!

RECIPE:

60-80 doughnut holes (depending on size)

1 ¾ tsp instant yeast
¾ cup whole milk
3 cups + 2 tbsp AP flour
7 large egg yolks
½ cup sugar
¾ tsp salt
4 oz butter, melted
1 tbsp vanilla extract

1/8 tsp of each: ground ginger, ground cardamom, ground allspice, ground cinnamon

tossing sugar: 1 cup sugar mixed with 1/8 tsp of each: ground ginger, ground cardamom, ground allspice, ground cinnamon

– Mix yeast, 2 ¾ cup flour and spices.
– Mix in milk.
– In another bowl mix egg yolks, sugar, salt & vanilla extract.
– Add ½ cup flour.
– Add melted butter.
– Add egg mixture to flour/milk mixture.
– Mix on low with paddle for 1 minute.
– Add remaining 2 tbsp of flour and mix on high for 1 minute. The dough will be very sticky.
– Gather dough into a ball and place in oiled bowl.
– Cover and let rise until doubled in size, about 1 ½ – 2 hours.
– Deflate dough and put in fridge for 1 hour to firm up.
– Roll dough on floured surface to 1/2″ thick.
– Cut out doughnut shapes.
– Let rise for 30 minutes while heating oil up to 370 degrees.
– Fry in batches of 6-10 doughnuts for 1 1/2 – 2 minutes, tossing constantly to make sure both sides fry evenly, until cooked through.
– Toss in tossing sugar.