Restaurant Recreations: How to make Adam Handling's cheese doughnuts at home

Cheesy classic: Handling's signature doughnuts

Sometimes, eating out, apologetic waiters offer the extras with that sorrowful look in their eyes, knowing a handful of olives for £7 is a fleece. Who needs the snacks, anyway? Much better to have a glass of Champagne and crack on with the starters.

Well, usually. At Adam Handling's places, which include the Frog in Covent Garden and his Chelsea outpost in the Belmond Cadogan Hotel, the snacks are a must. A healthy scoop of his chicken butter on a slab of fresh bread is a joy; it brings on a gleeful rush of anticipation for what's coming.

Handling's other first-round knockout are these cheese doughnuts. They're gorgeous, gooey things – savoury, of course, but still creamy, deceptively rich. In his restaurants, they come covered in grated parmesan and tons of black truffle, served two at a time – as the last bite goes, usually a thought arrives, a wondering whether, say, six or seven and half a bottle of white wine counts as a full meal.

In the restaurant, you can't test that theory – but you can at home. Handling's recipe below has been scaled down to lockdown proportions but the chef tells us that, if it's possible, making more tends to go better; his recipe for 30 doughnuts is here. Whether you're staying sensible with six or feeling hungry enough for the 30, put aside plenty of time for this one, which needs five hours of proving time. But trust us – these doughnuts are definitely worth the wait.

Adam Handling's cheese doughnuts

Makes: six doughnuts

Ingredients

For the doughnuts

  • 30ml whole milk
  • 25g caster sugar
  • 3g fresh yeast
  • 100g or strong flour
  • 1 egg
  • 13g unsalted butter, melted
  • Pinch of salt
  • Parmesan cheese, for grating

For the cheese sauce

  • 10g unsalted butter
  • 10g plain flour
  • 40g cheddar cheese
  • 40g gruyere cheese
  • 40g montgomery cheese
  • 60ml whole milk
  • 80ml double cream​
  • ½  tbsp Dijon mustard
  • Pinch of salt

Method

  • Start with the doughnuts. Add about a fifth of a teaspoon of sugar to the milk and let it warm to room temperature, and then add the yeast. Leave it to sit for 10 minutes in a warm environment, which will activate the yeast the mixture will start to smell like beer. 
  • Next, crack the egg and whisk it, and then pour off just over half. Take this half (the other isn't needed here), along with the flour, salt, sugar and add them into a mixer with a hook and form a dough. Slowly pour the milk and yeast mixture and mix until the dough comes off the sides of the bowl. Add the butter and mix until fully incorporated. It should still have a sticky consistency.
  • Now pour the dough into a bowl, cover it with a cloth and leave it to prove somewhere warm for two to four hours. At this point, you’ll want to start the sauce, which is detailed below. Once proven, refrigerate for an hour. 
  • Flour your chopping board and roll the dough into a sausage shape. Cut the dough into even pieces and roll into 15g balls. Leave to prove for an hour. 
  • Once proven, deep fry in vegetable oil until golden brown. Whilst frying, constantly stir the doughnuts to make them puffy. When they’re a good colour, remove them from the fryer and leave them to rest. Use a knife to make a small hole in them, for filling later with cheese sauce. 
     
  • For the sauce, cook the butter and flour together for 20 minutes on a low heat to make a roux. Add the cheeses and melt slowly. Turn the heat up to allow all the fat to come out – the aim is to avoid any lumps. 
  • Add the milk and stir with a whisk; the sauce should turn from cloudy to shiny. Pour in the cream and cook slowly on a low heat. Now the sauce will look very runny. 
  • Next, add the Dijon mustard and a pinch of salt. Cool it down by pouring it in a bowl and leaving it to rest. Put the sauce in the fridge, then take it out when you start to roll the dough, which will give it enough time to reach room temperature. Pour it in a bag and cut off one corner. Squeeze the sauce into the doughnuts.
  • To serve, plate up the doughnuts and top them with more of the cheese sauce. Finish by covering the doughnuts with grated parmesan and, if somehow you have some at home, fresh black truffle.

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