Stretching the doughnut

CAKE DOUGHNUTS AS 'BREAD' PUDDING WITH PASSION FRUIT 

I never knew how bad stale doughnuts tasted until I ate two-day-old ones recently. I mean, how could I know since doughnuts never stay around long enough to become leftovers, right?
    Well, I made some buttermilk cake doughnuts and doughnut holes last Saturday for a newspaper article (it'll be out on Sept 26), ate one – all right, three! and a couple of doughnut holes – and didn't have anyone to offer the rest to until the following Monday at work. But by that time, they were already stale and after I popped a whole doughnut hole into my mouth, I knew they were not fit to be shared as they were. I couldn't bear to dump them, and wondered what I could do with them.
    There are many suggestions online for truffles (make doughnuts into crumbs, combine with a liquid, form into balls and dunk in melted chocolate). There are recipes for bread pudding as well, but most use yeast-raised doughnuts.
     But I thought that might actually be a good idea even if my doughnuts were the cake type. The yeast doughnuts, like in normal bread pudding, would be allowed to soak in the egg and milk mixture to soak up some of the liquid before baking. I didn't do that with these doughnuts though, and baked them immediately after the custard had been pour into the baking dish in which I had arranged the broken doughnuts.
    I mixed in some rather sour passion fruit pulp on a whim and I'm glad I did because the combination of tangy and sweet together with the vanilla flavoured doughnuts made this dessert quite special. Though not particularly elegant, I think it would make a nice closing to a fancy meal, perhaps with some pouring cream or a dollop of Greek yoghurt. I am rather proud of it and would happily share this dish.
    Oh, who am I kidding? This is all a ploy to eat more doughnuts than I should.

Paired with passion fruit for tang

CAKE DOUGHNUT & PASSION FRUIT PUDDING
Serves 2

2-3 stale (day-old) cake doughnuts, preferably plain
1 egg
60ml milk
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 teaspoon cornflour
Pulp of one small passion fruit
Coarse golden sugar for sprinkling (optional)

• Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a 15cm shallow ramekin or two 125ml ramekins. Break up the doughnuts into two or three pieces and arrange in the ramekins.
• Beat the egg, milk, caster sugar and cornflour together. Stir in the passion fruit pulp. Pour mixture over the doughnuts. Sprinkle with the coarse sugar, if using. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the edges are golden and the centre is still a little wobbly. Set on a wire rack to cool; the custard will firm up a little more. Serve warm or at room temperature. Do not refrigerate as the doughnuts will become hard.

PRINTABLE RECIPE