Donuts

F&W Best New Chef 2017 Yoshi Okai, of Austin’s Otoko, makes these crisp fried doughnuts with a combination of silken tofu, sugar, flour and salt. The texture is not that of a traditional doughnut; instead, it’s more like mochi, with an appealing chew. The creamy, sweet and smoky mezcal sauce is a most excellent accompaniment.Okai’s crisp fried doughnuts have an appealing chew, almost like mochi. He says, “At Nishiki Market in Kyoto, Japan, there is a tofu shop where they’ve been making tofu for over 50 years and tofu doughnuts for 25 to 
30 years. I was a teenager when I ate them, and I re-created the recipe later because I was kind of homesick. I don’t have 
a recipe for them from Nishiki, but I made them from memory, and I think they came out pretty good.”
 Slideshow: More Doughnut Recipes

"This snack is very popular in South China to serve to guests during the Chinese New Year,” says cookbook author Kei Lum Chan. "It is so named because the round dough balls, when deep fried, will crack open like someone is laughing. It carries a meaning of being able to laugh throughout the year."  This recipe originally appeared in CHINA: THE COOKBOOK by Kei Lum and Diora Fong Chan. Slideshow: More Doughnut Recipes

Some chefs can’t stop playing with their food. Consider Alex Talbot and Aki Kamozawa, the innovators behind a blog called Ideas in Food and the partners at Curiosity Doughnuts in Stockton, New Jersey. Why the name Curiosity? “Because it fuels everything we do,” says Kamozawa. To perfect their signature hand-rolled cider doughnuts, they tinkered endlessly with the texture, finally borrowing a technique from Japanese milk bread. The simultaneously moist and tender results put standard farmers’ market cider doughnuts to shame. The only way to improve on perfection? A luscious glaze or a roll in cinnamon-cardamom sugar. Fresh out of the fryer, these babies are straight-up mind-blowing. Here’s how to make your own batch.—Tina Ujlaki

Two Seattle bakers—Top Pot Doughnuts owners Mark and Michael Klebeck—with a cult following inspire DIY devotees at home with their homemade doughnut recipes.

These delicious recipes include fluffy yeast doughnuts and molasses-cinnamon cake doughnuts.

As a make-ahead strategy, prepare separate batches of the dry ingredients in advance and store them in labeled and sealed plastic bags. Plus: More Dessert Recipes and Tips