I have another Hawaiian recipe to share because despite three weeks passing, I still am daydreaming about our amazing vacation to Hawaii (which you can read about here). One of my favorite spots in Hawaii was Leonard’s Bakery in Honolulu. Leonard’s serves malasadas which are Portguese donuts covered in cinnamon sugar. I went back for seconds of the chocolate filled ones.
Like Leonard's, but better
When I sunk my teeth into my first Hawaiian malasada–which was a chocolate custard-filled malasada known as “Dobash”–it was instant love. And I began calculating how I could replicate this treat at home. The donut is crustier than most raised donuts, so bread flour works best. The chocolate custard on the inside was more like pudding, and I have to admit my chocolate custard is even better than Leonard’s.
Raising Donuts
Making malasadas is similar to making most donuts, except we use bread flour instead of all-purpose flour. The dough is made of 3 eggs, yeast, sugar, warm milk, sour cream, butter, and bread flour. You can do 2-3 risings before frying, the third being after you’ve cut them into circles.
For the custard, I used my chocolate pudding recipe with a few tweaks to produce a thick, luscious custard. I also used a marinade injector to plunge the custard into the fried malasadas. I got mine at Home Goods, but this one at Sur La Table looks fun!
You’ll also need a candy thermometer to gauge the temperature of the frying oil. It should be at 350F when you’re ready to fry the donuts, and it’ll drop as you put in the “cold” dough, so you’ll want it to heat up again before the next batch.
This recipe makes about 20 3″ in diameter malasadas, so you’ll have a lot of batches!
Chocolate-filled Hawaiian Malasada
Ingredients
Donuts
- 2 tbsp Warm water
- 1 tbsp Instant yeast
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 3 Eggs
- 2 tbsp Butter, melted
- 1/2 cup Milk
- 1/2 cup Sour cream
- 1/4 tsp Kosher salt
- 3-4 cups Bread flour
- Vegetable oil for frying
- 1/2 cup Sugar plus 1 tbsp cinnamon for sprinkling
Chocolate custard filling
- 1/3 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
- 1 cup Sugar
- 3 tbsp Cornstarch
- 1/2 cup Sour cream
- 1½ cups Milk
- 2 Egg yolks
- 2 tbsp Butter
- 1/2 cup Semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 tsp Vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp Almond extract
Instructions
Donuts
- In a stand mixer bowl combine warm water, yeast, and sugar. In a liquid measuring cup, whisk together milk and sour cream and microwave for 30 seconds.
- In a liquid measuring cup, whisk together milk, sour cream, and butter, and microwave for 30 seconds.
- Add to the milk the two egg yolks and whisk until combined. Pour over the yeast and sugar.
- Fit bowl into the stand mixer with the dough hook and add 1 cup of bread flour. Turn mixer on low and continue adding a half cup of flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, about 3-4 cups of flour total.
- Dough should be sticky but not stuck to the bowl. Pull the dough out and grease the stand mixer bowl with oil and place dough back in. Cover and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about an hour.
- Flip dough over after it has risen and allow to rise again, covered, for an hour. Prepare custard while the dough rises.
- Roll dough out onto a clean, floured surface so that is 3/4" thick. Use a cup or 3" biscuit cutter to cut round circles of dough. You can re-use scrap dough. You can allow the cut dough to rise one more time for a half hour, or you can go straight to frying.
- Line a large cooling rack with paper towels.
- In a deep bowl, combine 1/2 cup sugar with 1 tbsp ground cinnamon.
- Heat a heavy-bottomed pot of vegetable oil, at least 2" deep, to 350°F. Fry donuts in batches, 1-2 minutes on each side. Allow the vegetable oil to return to 350°F before beginning the next batch.
- Place fried donuts in the cinnamon-sugar bowl and transfer to the lined cooling rack.
- When all the donuts have been fried and coated with cinnamon sugar, you can inject them with the custard.
Chocolate custard
- In a medium sauce pan, whisk together cocoa powder, sugar, and cornstarch.
- In a liquid measuring cup, whisk together the milk, sour cream, and egg yolks. Pour over the cocoa mixture.
- Turn the heat to medium and whisk constantly until the mixture has thickened significantly.
- Turn the heat off, and add the butter, chocolate chips, and extracts. Cool slightly.
- When donuts are ready, use a flavor injecting syringe to inject 15 mL of custard into the side of each donut.
- Serve warm.
Notes
Like this? Try these!
