The first Apple Cider Donuts I ever fried myself came out of a cooking class above a general store in Woodstock, Vermont, on a Tuesday morning in October when the maples on the green had already gone the color of a struck match. The class was run by a woman named Marnie Colburn, who owned the space and ran it more like a stubbornly cheerful kitchen than a school. She had a candy thermometer clipped to a Dutch oven and a bowl of cinnamon sugar already waiting.
I had wandered in the day before, honestly, to buy coffee. There was a printed sheet taped to the register that said Cider Doughnuts, tomorrow, nine a.m., four seats left. I signed up on the back of the receipt.
A Tuesday Morning in Woodstock
Marnie started us at the stove before she started us anywhere else. Two cups of fresh cider from the mill down the road went into a saucepan and stayed there until they were half a cup of something dark and glossy that smelled like a barn in a good way. Boiled apples, brown sugar, a little smoke of caramel at the edges.
She told us the whole trick of the doughnut is in that reduction. Skip it and you have a cake doughnut with a suggestion of apple. Do it properly and you have the real thing.
The kitchen smelled, in stages, like three different autumns. First the cider going down. Then the flour bowl once the nutmeg hit it. Then, when the rings finally slid into the oil, that unmistakable browned butter and hot sugar smell that is the whole reason people drive an hour to an orchard in the first place.
What the Research Turned Up After I Got Home
Back in my apartment in LA I went looking for where these actually come from, because Marnie kept calling them a New England thing and I wanted to check. The colonial version does go back centuries. Farmhouses had rendered fat sitting around after autumn butchering, cider was the drink of the season, and cooks folded the two together into simple fry dough. A Buffalo Enquirer article in 1901 already lists cider doughnuts as a Halloween treat.
But the doughnut we picture now, the tidy spiced buttermilk ring with the cinnamon sugar crust, is basically a mid-twentieth-century invention. Adolph Levitt built the first automated doughnut machine in his Harlem bakery in 1921, and in 1951 the Doughnut Corporation of America rolled out the Sweet Cider Doughnut. Farm stands and cider mills, suddenly able to mass-produce them, made them the ritual capstone of the pick-your-own weekend. So the icon of the New England orchard was actually engineered in Manhattan. I love that.
Two other things worth clearing up. The cider here is unfiltered non-alcoholic pressed apple juice, not the fizzy alcoholic drink the word means in Europe. And traditional cider doughnuts are fried cake doughnuts, not yeast-raised, and not the baked apple cider donuts that show up on every fall Pinterest board now. Baked is fine. It is just a different animal.
Bringing the Recipe Back to My LA Kitchen
I made these the first Sunday morning I was home. LAX to my apartment took two hours in Sunday traffic the night before, so I slept in, then padded into the kitchen before anyone in the building was up and started reducing cider. My apartment is small. The smell got everywhere. I do not consider that a problem.
Sourcing was easier than I expected. I get unfiltered cider from the little produce stand at the Hollywood farmers’ market on Sunday, the one run by the family from Tehachapi who bring their own apples down. Freshly grated nutmeg from a whole nut, because pre-ground goes flat within a month and I could taste the difference next to Marnie’s. Buttermilk from the corner store. Everything else was already in the cupboard.
I did change one small thing. Marnie rolled her dough after only forty minutes in the fridge and hers behaved. Mine did not, in a warm LA kitchen in October. I now chill it a full hour, sometimes overnight if I have started the cider the night before. Otherwise it sticks to everything.
What Goes Into It
- Two cups fresh unfiltered apple cider, boiled down to half a cup
- Three and a half cups all purpose flour
- Baking powder, baking soda, fine salt
- Ground cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, a whisper of allspice
- Granulated sugar and packed light brown sugar
- Four tablespoons melted unsalted butter
- Two room temperature eggs and half a cup of well shaken buttermilk
- Two quarts neutral oil for frying, canola or peanut
- A cup of granulated sugar and a tablespoon of cinnamon for the coating
Frying Day, Step by Step
Reduce the cider first. Low bubble, twenty minutes, until it coats a spoon and looks like thin maple syrup. Cool it while you whisk your dry bowl and your wet bowl. Fold, do not beat, or the doughnuts turn tough. I learned that the second time I made these, when I got impatient with a spatula and ended up with rings you could bounce.
Chill. Roll to a half inch on a floured counter. Cut with a three inch cutter. Save the holes, they are the cook’s snack.
Heat the oil in a heavy Dutch oven to three fifty. I use the one with the slightly chipped lid that my sister handed down when she moved. The candy thermometer matters. Below three forty they soak up oil and go greasy. Above three seventy the outside browns before the inside sets.
Two or three at a time. Sixty to seventy five seconds a side. Lift them with a spider, thirty seconds on the rack so they stop steaming, then straight into the cinnamon sugar and turn until every surface is coated. The sugar clings best when they are still hot enough to fog your glasses.
A Few Honest Notes
They are best the day you fry them. Really best in the first hour. I have tried microwaving them the next morning and it is fine, not the same. I almost skipped the holes the first time. I am glad I did not, they fry a minute less and disappear off the rack before anyone else notices.
Serve them warm, with hot fresh cider if you can get it, or strong black coffee if you cannot. Marnie served them on a wooden board with paper napkins and nothing else, and I have not improved on that presentation.
Every October I make a batch and think about that Tuesday morning in Woodstock. The maples, the receipt I signed up on, and Marnie telling us the whole trick was in the reduction. She was right.
Apple Cider Donuts
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Pour the 2 cups of apple cider into a small saucepan and bring to a lively simmer over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the cider reduces to about 1/2 cup and looks like a dark, glossy syrup, 15 to 20 minutes. Pour into a heatproof measuring cup and cool to room temperature.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, 1.5 tsp cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice until evenly combined.
- In a large bowl, whisk the granulated sugar, brown sugar, and melted butter until smooth. Whisk in the eggs one at a time until glossy, then whisk in the buttermilk and the cooled cider reduction until the mixture is uniform and light amber.
- Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and fold with a spatula until a soft, sticky dough just comes together. Do not overwork it or the doughnuts will turn tough.
- Turn the dough onto a large sheet of parchment, pat it into a rough rectangle, cover with a second sheet of parchment, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to overnight, until firm enough to roll.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll the chilled dough to a 1/2 inch thickness. Cut out rings with a floured 3-inch donut cutter, transferring them to a parchment-lined baking sheet along with the holes. Gather scraps, pat back together once, and cut again to get about 12 doughnuts.
- Whisk the 1 cup granulated sugar with the 1 tbsp cinnamon in a shallow bowl and set it near the stove. Set a wire rack over a baking sheet next to it.
- Pour the neutral oil into a heavy Dutch oven to a depth of about 3 inches and heat over medium to medium-high until it reaches 350 F on a thermometer.
- Working in batches of 2 or 3 to avoid crowding, gently slide the doughnuts into the hot oil. Fry for 60 to 75 seconds per side, flipping once, until deep golden brown and cooked through. Adjust the burner to keep the oil between 350 and 360 F.
- Lift the doughnuts out with a spider skimmer, letting the oil drip back into the pot, and set them briefly on the wire rack for about 30 seconds so they stop steaming but stay hot.
- While still warm, toss each doughnut in the cinnamon sugar, turning to coat every surface, then return to the rack. Fry and coat the holes the same way, giving them about 45 seconds per side.
- Serve the apple cider donuts warm, ideally within an hour of frying, with hot fresh apple cider or strong black coffee alongside.