Today I’ve got Persian love cake donuts! They’re flavored with cardamom, lemon, and rosewater, drizzled with a lemon rose glaze, topped with rose petals and pistachios. If you’ve never had Persian love cake, you should absolutely try it first. Then: these donuts! They’ve got all of my favorite flavors in one place. And they’re inspired by these ones from Twigg studios, which are a great alternative for baked instead of fried.
If you’d like to learn how decorate your donuts so they look just like the ones in this post, check out my original Persian love cake post. In it, I describe how to choose the right rose petals and pistachios for decorating, and I give instructions for treating these ingredients so they’ll look their best. It’s all really easy and just takes a little bit of know-how.
Persian love cake donuts
- Yield: about 8 to 10 donuts
Ingredients
For the donuts:
- Neutral high smoke point oil, for deep frying (e.g., canola)
- 250g all purpose flour (2 cups), plus more for dusting
- 0.5g (¼ teaspoon) cardamom
- 4g salt (¾ teaspoon)
- 9g baking powder (2 teaspoons)
- 45g melted butter (3 tablespoons), cooled slightly
- 100g sugar (½ cup)
- 50g egg (1 large) at room temperature
- 120g plain unstrained yogurt (½ cup) at room temperature
- 1g (½ teaspoon) lemon zest
- 5g (1 teaspoon) rosewater
For the glaze:
- 75g (⅔ cup) powdered sugar
- 5g (1 teaspoon) rosewater
- 10g (2 teaspoons) lemon juice
- Finely ground pistachios and edible dried rose petals for decoration
Instructions
Make the donuts:
- Set up a safe fry station on your stove or a dedicated deep-fryer. Make sure it cannot be knocked over. Set over medium-low heat so it can heat gradually while you prep the donuts, and set up a deep fry thermometer. Keep a close eye on it, and aim for it to reach 350°F [180°C] by the time you’re ready to fry. If it heats too quickly, reduce the heat to low or turn off for a few moments until you’re ready.
- In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, cardamom, salt, and baking powder. Whisk or sift together until completely lump free.
- In a separate mixing bowl, combine the melted butter, sugar, egg, yogurt, and lemon zest. Whisk together until completely smooth.
- Scrape the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, then mix together just until combined (do not overmix).
- Dust a clean counter with more flour, then scrape the dough onto the dusted counter. Sprinkle on a little more flour, then gently pat it into an oval.* Take care to make sure it’s well dusted both underneath and on top. Roll it out to ½-inch thick, redusting above and below to keep it from sticking as you work.
- Stamp out as many donuts as you can using a donut stamp or set of pastry rings. Collect the scraps**, re-roll, and stamp out more donuts.
- Once the oil has heated, fry the donuts. They should take about 2 minutes per side at 350°F [180°C], and should be deeply brown (but not burnt) and cooked through. Remove to a paper-towel-lined plate or cooling-rack-lined sheet pan to cool.
Glaze and decorate:
- Whisk together the powdered sugar, rosewater, and lemon juice until completely smooth.
- Drizzle lines over the donuts and top with pistachios and rose petals.
Notes
* Do not knead the dough or incorporate the flour into it, or it will turn out dry—just pat it into shape.
** To get a really good re-roll out of the scraps, try not to let any flour touch the freshly stamped edges, and compress them together so the bare edges mush together with other bare edges. Try not to introduce a lot of new flour. Feel free to fry the donut holes, or re-roll them with the scraps (if you fry them, they will take about 30 seconds less per side).
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