Hello, hello my lovely friends. Happy Friday!I’m here with a recipe today. We all love donuts, fresh, soft, sweet and delicious. But have you ever had cottage cheese/ quark donuts? If you have tried them before, you know exactly how scrumptious they are BUT if you haven’t had them before- you will absolutely love these melt in your mouth, comforting, cozy, delicious incredible little bites of goodness 😆 you are in for an awesome treat!
When they are around, I have no control over my cravings, you can’t just pass these tasty donuts by, you’ll reach out to take yet another one. I recommend making a double batch because even my picky boys can’t get enough of them!
I feel like a little kid that just got the most amazing toy ever. And you know why? Well that’s because I recently managed to find decent quality cottage cheese that is not salted and granulated. And that’s a huge deal for me. After all these years in Canada, I finally can make a descent dessert using cottage cheese. In Ukraine where I was born and grew up, I was so spoiled with fresh, good quality dairy products, the variety is so huge, you can buy lots of great products in supermarkets but if you want a great stuff with a big fat content(so perfect for baking) you’d go to the farmer’s market for the freshest, most tasty dairy products .
So when I found a package of cottage cheese that looked decent I wanted to scream form joy! I brought it home thinking of all these amazing desserts I’ll make, so many of them I haven’t had for years! So when I brought it home, I went numb, I put it in the fridge on the top shelf and treated it like a Ming dynasty relic 😂😂 I didn’t want spoil the dream, I couldn’t believe my luck! It took me sometime and courage to finally use it , but boy that was quite a hilarious experience.So now, when I finally have some good stuff easily accessible , I’ll be sharing more recipes with this this awesome product. But today, I’m sharing a recipe of one the favourite and easy donuts/ sweet cheese balls. They are not overly sweet, dough can be made completely without sugar but later dusted with powdered sugar. I hope you’ll give it a try, enjoy and will make them all the time.
Fried Cottage cheese donuts/ balls
Notes
- This recipe is a big batch and makes about 20-24 little donuts.
- You can easily divide it if you’d like!If the dough it too sticky, add more flower, the idea here is not to make it too doughy, otherwise donuts will be tough, not airy and won’t have have a wonderful cottage cheese flavour.
Ingredients
- Cottage cheese — 400g
- Large eggs —2
- Sugar — 1/4 cups, more if you like it sweet or opt out
- Baking powder — 1tsp
- All purpose flour— roughly 1 cup (depends on the consistency. You might need more)
- Vanilla -0,5tsp
- Non fragrant oil for frying, I use grape seed – 2-3 cups
Instructions
- In a medium size bowl using a hand mixer whisk eggs wth sugar until it foams ( a minute or two)
- Add vanilla extract
- Add cottage cheese and mix it in with a fork or use a hand mixer again. Mixture should be well mixed and eggs fully incorporated.
- Sift in flour and baking powder into the bowl. At this stage you can use a spoon or knead the dough with your hands.
- If the dough it too sticky, add more flower, the idea here is not to make it too doughy, otherwise donuts will be tough, not airy and won’t have have a wonderful cottage cheese flavour.
- I leave the dough somewhat sticky and just coat each ball when I form it in some flour before frying!
- Dust a table or a big cutting board with flour and start shaping your donuts. You can make them as big as you’d like, but I make them a size of a walnut ( they also expand and puff up while frying)
- As I mentioned before, if the dough sticks to your hands too much, coat each ball with some additional flour, it would make a huge difference.
- Heat enough oil in a big saucepan or use a deep frier. Make sure your oil is not too fragrant, I never like using canola oil and instead use grape seed oil.
- Make sure oil is properly heated, just put a small ball into the hot oil, If a donut falls to the bottom bottom of the saucepan, it’s hot enough but if bubbles form around the donut, it’s time to start frying.
- Fry donuts on medium heat, don’t fry a huge batch at once, they need space for proper cooking. Fry for about 2-3 minutes per side, or until ready, it should be golden brown.
- Take them out carefully using mesh oil colander and place them on paper towel to get rid of access oil.
- Let them cool off before dusting with powdered sugar and enjoy!