Best jelly donuts recipe, jelly doughnuts or Bismark donuts and Berliner recipe that won me over right away. I can hardly remember when I ate my first jelly donut. They were just always there. Whether for carnival, for a child’s birthday or just as a coffee and cake pastry. The little powdered sugar balls with jam filling have always been a part of it. However, I remember exactly when I ate my first home-baked Berliner according to a traditional Berliner recipe. I’d rather not tell you how many I ate that afternoon.
Ingredients for homemade jelly donuts recipe
550g flour
60g sugar
1 packet of vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon salt
250ml milk (lukewarm)
80g butter (fluffy, alternatively margarine)
2 eggs
1 packet of dry yeast
1 liter oil (e.g. liquid sunflower oil)
200ml jam without pieces (e.g. strawberry or plum) or custard
For the filling, instead of jam, you can also try all the usual variants from whipped cream to custard, applesauce, turnip greens, Nutella and much more. Some sugar or powdered sugar, or icing, fondant or chocolate icing can be chosen as desired. The jelly donuts recipe knows no limits here.
Instructions for homemade jelly donuts recipe – Berliner recipe
Mix ingredients for the yeast dough in a food processor and let it rise for an hour in a warm place, covered, until it has doubled in size.
Knead the dough with your hands and roll out on a floured work surface until about 1.5 cm thick. Now cut out rings with round cookie cutters or a large glass with a diameter of about 7cm Ø.
Let the cut out donut blanks rest on a board or baking sheet.
Now heat a pan with about a liter of oil, when small bubbles appear on a wooden stick, turn the stove top down to medium heat (i.e. bring from 170° degrees to about 150° degrees).
Now add about 3-4 doughnut blanks to the pan and brown for about 2 minutes per side, depending on the desired browning. It may be that the doughnuts will cool the fat a bit and then a little more time is needed in the pan. The fact that the doughnuts float in the pan creates the so-called light collar, which does not disappear even when carefully turned.
Transfer the finished doughnuts from the pan directly onto a sugared plate, then continue to cool and dry on a wire rack. If you prefer a different decoration like icing or powdered sugar, then place the doughnut on the wire rack without sugar. I always put kitchen paper underneath to remove further fat.
Now poke a hole in the side of the donut with a wooden stick and create some space by gently swirling back and forth in the doughnut.
Then use a piping bag with a long shaft to press the jam into the donut. The jam should be without chunks and rather a bit runnier.
Who would have thought that it is so easy to bake donuts yourself?
Hardly any pastry has more names than jelly donuts. For me, who grew up in Düsseldorf Germany, they are simply called “Berliner”. But as soon as you leave your radius at home, the sales clerks in the bakery then often look strange at you when you want a Berliner. I’ll tell you the secret of jelly donuts in my jelly donuts recipe.
Frequently asked questions about donuts and jelly donuts recipe
What other names do jelly donuts have? What do you call the little round balls of powdered sugar with jelly or custard inside?
For me, the yeast particles fried in fat in the pan with jam are “Berliner“. However, in Berlin they are called “Pfannkuchen” which means pancake and typical pancake in Berlin is called “Eierkuchen”. The jelly donut is called Krapfen in Bavaria, Kreppel in Hesse, and Berliner Ballen in the Ruhr area. Aacheners call it Puffel and the Saarland as well as Baden-Wuerttemberg Schmalzgreben or Fastnachtsküchle.
Beyond the borders the jelly doughnut is also known as:
Faschingskrapfen (Austria)
Glaskrapfen (Austria)
Jelly Doghnut (Great Britain)
Bismark and Jelly Donut (USA)
Burlington Bun and Jambuster (Canada)
Sufganiyah (Jewish Church)
Boules de Berlin bzw. Beignet (France)
Berlijnse bollen (Belgium)
Berliner bollen or Berlijnse bollen (Netherlands)
Ponitschki (Bulgaria)
Bombolone bzw. Bomba (Italy)
Bola de Berlim (Portugal)
The variants filled with whipped cream are called Kitchener bun in Australia, Bavarian Creme Donut in the USA and sonhos in Brazil.
I didn’t realize how easy it actually is to bake jelly donuts myself. However, the doughnuts are not baked in an oven, but baked in a pan in fat. That’s why they often have it in their names, because you don’t need an oven to make them. This is one of the biggest differences from the jelly donuts recipe to classic cake recipes.
Basically, in the jelly donuts recipe, you deep fry the yeast dough and the yeast particles. However, you don’t use a deep fryer for this, but a pan or a large pot. Due to the high egg content, the doughnut does not completely fill up with fat during baking.
Only after baking in the pan is the jam filling injected into the doughnut. To do this, use the light side edge, also called the collar. It is best to use a piping bag for dosing and filling.
Leckere Donuts sind selbst gemacht extra frisch und locker. Selbst frittiert in der Pfanne sind die beliebten kleinen Kuchenringe extrem fluffig und lecker. Die Donuts können nach belieben verziert werden und eignen sich auch perfekt für Kindergeburtstage.
I was amazed at how easy it is to bake jelly doughnuts. They really taste best freshly baked. I love them with homemade strawberry jam or plum jam and sugar as a coating. Powdered sugar looks nicer, however it seems even sweeter to me.
When I bake my jelly donuts recipe, I don’t just use the pan for jelly doughnuts, I bake a few classic donuts beforehand. The dough is identical, so you can also bake jelly donuts and classic doughnuts at the same time from one dough then. So it’s no wonder that the doughnuts recipe and jelly doughnuts recipe are among my favorites.
If you want to fill the doughnuts differently, make sure that some of the filling is still peeking out of the collar. If you can see what filling is inside from the outside, you’ll avoid surprises.
Popular recipe for jelly donuts, also called pancakes, doughnuts or Berliner Ballen, homemade unbeatable fresh and delicious. Anyone who has ever prepared dounuts themselves will compare any store-bought dounut with the fluffy self-fried doughnuts. The dounuts can be decorated as desired and are perfect for children's birthday parties, New Year's Eve and, of course, Carnival or Mardi Gras.
Mix ingredients in a stand mixer and leave covered in a warm place for one hour. Start 60 minutes timer here
550 g all-purpose flour, 60 g sugar, 8 g vanilla sugar, 1 tsp salt, 250 ml whole milk 3,5%, 80 g margarine vegetable (e.g., sunflower), 7 g instant yeast, 2 eggs
Knead the dough with your hands and roll out on a floured work surface to a thickness of approx. 1.5 cm. Now cut out rings with round cookie cutters with a diameter of approx. 6.8cm Ø.
Let the cut out donuts rest on a board or baking tray. Roll out dough remnants again and again until no dough remains at the end.
Heat pan with about a liter of oil, when small bubbles appear on a wooden stick, turn the stove top down to medium (i.e., bring from 170 °C to about 150 °C).
1 Liter oil (neutral, e.g. sunflower oil)
Now add donuts to pan and brown for about 2 minutes per side, depending on desired browning. It may be that the fat cools down a little due to the donuts and then a little more time is needed in the pan.Start 2 minutes timer here
Transfer donuts from the pan directly to a sugared plate and then place on a wire rack. If you prefer a different decoration such as icing or powdered sugar, then give the donuts without sugar on the grid. I always put some more kitchen paper underneath to remove some of the fat.
Now poke a hole in the side of the donut with a wooden stick and create some space by gently swirling back and forth in the doughnut.
Then use a piping bag with a long shaft to squeeze the jam (without pieces and rather liquid consistency) into the jelly donut.
200 ml jelly
Notes
For the last dough remnant I recommend you then of course no longer use a cookie cutter, but simply form a ball and flatten it.I personally like to divide the dough and make only 3-6 donuts and then use the remaining dough for doughnuts filled with jam. I prefer to use strawberry jam or even plum jam, but here you can absolutely vary. Also chocolate cream or vanilla pudding tastes very good with Berliners. Make sure with different fillings that you can still see what’s in it afterwards by letting the filling hang out slightly.
You can still eat the jelly doughnuts a day later, but they will continue to grease out. I always put some kitchen paper in the box with them to soak up the grease further. The powdered sugar coating is unfortunately no longer visible after a day and you have to powder again additionally.
By the way, donuts go very well with muffins on the cake table. Have fun trying out my jelly donuts recipe and filling it according to your preferences.
What is the name of the jelly donut “Berliner” in your region and do you also have a special jelly donuts recipe that you like to bake regularly?
