Maple Whisky Doughnuts with Candied Pecans & Bacon

It’s sugar shack season and time for all things maple! And these sweet and savoury maple whisky doughnuts do not disappoint!!! This is a super easy and quick baked doughnut recipe. But the recipe is elevated with a couple of fun ingredients: whisky salt, and maple whisky. (However if you can’t get your hands on these ingredients, don’t deprive yourself from this decadent spring treat, we will talk substitutes that you have in your kitchen!)

Let’s talk about these 2 ingredients a little because I’m always looking for a way to use local ingredients.

The whisky salt is a single malt whisky barrel smoked salt handcrafted with all natural Vancouver island sea salt using barrels from the Shelter Point Distillery. As I don’t live in Vancouver but rather Québec city, I bought it on Amazon. (gotta love Amazon!) The addition of salty/smoky flavours really balance out the sweet maple frosting that tops these doughnuts. If you don’t have whisky salt, just use fleur de sel, the idea is you a little delicate salt to balance the sweet maple flavour.

And the maple whisky is the perfect blend of 2 Canadian specialties: Canadian whisky and sweet maple syrup called Sortilège made in Montréal, Québec. (Of course this isn’t just delicious in doughnuts it’s also amazing in a glass, by a fire, after an afternoon spent outside in the snow…) You will just use a little bit in the white chocolate ganache frosting to give it that maple flavour. If you don’t have maple whisky, substitute it with an ounce of maple syrup and voilà you get maple frosting!

So let’s get started!

Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Then prep your doughnut pans by greasing them with butter. (I like shortcuts occasionally and will use cooking spray).

This recipe calls for browned butter, so melt 4 tbsp of unsalted butter in a small pot over medium heat until it browns. Here’s a tip: when it starts melting it will bubble, big bubbles, spit and make a lot of noise doing so. However when everything gets quiet and the big bubbles die down, you’ll notice it starts to foam and froth (this is when you really want to keep an eye on it because it starts to brown very quickly and you don’t want it to go from brown to burnt. So once it smells nutty and is a beautiful golden brown take it off the heat and pour it into a heat proof bowl.

Then whisk together the dry ingredients: 1 1/4 cups of all purpose flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, a pinch of salt and a 1/4 cup brown sugar. You want to whisk everything to make sure there are no lumps.

On to the wet ingredients. Crack a large egg into a separate bowl, add in 1/4 cup of maple syrup, 1/2 cup of buttermilk (I often substitute this with almost 1/2 cup of milk, and 1 tbsp of white vinegar = 1/2 cup altogether), 1 tsp of vanilla and your brown butter. Whisk everything until smooth. Now add the dry ingredients to your egg mixture until the flour is well incorporated but don’t over mix it.

Spoon the batter in your prepared pans. You only want to fill the cavities about halfway. This recipe makes between 10-12 doughnuts depending on how generous you are spooning out the batter.

Bake for 11-14 minutes. (Every oven is different) You are looking for them to be lightly golden.

Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes and then pop them out of the pans.

Next up: the maple whisky frosting!

Start by chopping up 1/2 cup of white chocolate (I often use white chocolate chips and then no chopping is needed) and putting them in a heat proof bowl. Then pour 1/4 cup of heavy cream in a small sauce pan with an ounce of the maple whisky, heat gently until simmering then pour the cream mixture over the white chocolate. Stir until the white chocolate is completely melted and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

After it has cooled, whisk it a bit, and start adding icing sugar, I like to do this in steps, 2 tbsp at a time, and whisking vigorously in between, until I’ve added 6 tbsp total, whisk until it is now opaque and thick enough to coat your doughnuts and not drip off. Then dunk your doughnuts in the frosting (don’t forget to taste the frosting… come on, you know you want to!) until they are all frosted. If you over whisk the frosting (it happens… sometimes the day’s frustrations come out in our whisking, lol.) then instead of dunking them just spread the frosting onto the doughnuts as you would a cake! (As Julia Child would say “When you’re alone in the kitchen whooo’s to know!”) *If you are making the frosting with maple syrup instead of maple whisky, you will only need 5 tbsp of icing sugar.

Now it’s time to make the candied pecans. Toast a 1/2 cup of pecans in a pan over medium heat until they start to smell nutty or in the oven at 400 degree Fahrenheit for 7-8 minutes. I like doing them on the stove personally because after they’ve toasted I add a drizzle of maple syrup to candy them (ta-da everything in one pan!) and just cook them on medium heat for about 30 seconds until they are coated. It’s important to keep the pecans moving in the pan so you don’t burn the maple syrup. (It’s really easy to do…guilty!) Then pour the nuts onto a cutting board, let them cool, they will clump together because they have candied. Break out your favourite chefs knife (I love my Mosfiata knives!) and chop them very finely so you have a candied pecan crumb to sprinkle on your doughnuts.

Next up, cook 3 strips of bacon until crispy, but not burnt, in a pan on medium heat. Once desired crispiness is achieved put them on a cutting board and let them cool. Once cool enough to touch chop them into fine pieces.