Brioche Crumb Cake Doughnuts (Inspired by Entenmann's)

These fluffy, fried yeast-raised brioche crumb cake doughnuts are topped with a powder sugar glaze and crunchy crumb cake topping. Unlike most recipes for crumb cake doughnuts which use cake doughnuts as a base and bake in a doughnut pan with the crumb on top, these are are made with a deep fried brioche dough with flecks of vanilla bean and nutmeg throughout.

I'm super excited to share this recipe with you all. Jimmy brought all the extra doughnuts to work with him and said he even saw people going back for seconds, so you know they're good.

This recipe's origins are rooted in my deep and abiding love for Entenmann's classic crumb cake doughnuts. True story: one time I read an article (headline) that said Entenmann's factory was closing down and I immediately went out and bought 3 boxes of crumb doughnuts to stash in the freezer “for emergencies.” When Jimmy asked why there were 3 boxes of what he called "mediocre doughnuts" in the freezer, I showed him the article and he pointed out that actually just one of their factories was closing. D'oh!

Originally I set out to make a copycat recipe of the Entenmann's crumb cake doughnuts, but I quickly realized a lot of people have done similar recipes already.

Besides, I didn't want to have to buy a doughnut pan — and didn't want to create a recipe that required you to buy a doughnut pan — so I switched gears and decided to make a recipe that's an homage to the Entenmann's crumb cake doughnut, made instead using a fried yeast-raised doughnut.

cake doughnut vs. yeast-raised doughnut

A cake doughnut is leavened by aerating butter and sugar along with chemical leaveners like baking soda or baking powder and the texture is similar to cake, with a tender, moist, dense interior crumb. Like cakes, cake doughnuts are baked in molded pans.

A yeast-raised doughnut is made from a dough leavened with yeast, like a brioche dough (the same dough used for burger buns and cinnamon rolls). Yeast raised doughnuts are shaped by hand-rolling or by cutting. Yeast-raised doughnuts are deep fried, resulting in an airy, breadier interior crumb and a soft exterior crust.

the brioche dough

This brioche dough is loosely adapted from my friend Erin's Thanksgiving doughnuts over on her blog, Cloudy Kitchen. It's a lighter brioche as far as brioche doughs go, with just 17% butter (in baker's percentage) and uses vanilla bean paste for stronger vanilla flavor and visible flecks of vanilla bean throughout.

I adapted her recipe to use instant yeast instead of active dry (my preference) and I've added nutmeg to to the dough to enhance the overall crumb cake vibe. If you only have active dry yeast, you can use the base dough recipe from Erin's site instead, and then pop back over here for my glaze and crumb topping.

Brioche dough is best made with a stand mixer and dough hook. You have to knead it twice — first you knead together everything without the butter, and then you add the very, very soft butter very, very slowly so that the dough has time to incorporate it before you add more. If you add the butter right at the start it will coat the flour and prevent the gluten from forming. You don't want that. You want to add the butter after the gluten has formed so it coats the gluten strands.

Once all the butter is incorporated you'll chill the dough in the fridge for at least 3 hours before using. I usually leave it in the fridge overnight for a long cool rise which helps the dough develop a stronger flavor. Because the butter in the dough firms up in the fridge, brioche is easiest to handle when it's still cold. It might double in size, but it also might not — the butter prevents a dramatic, bubbly rise.

There's no need to let it warm up or come to room temperature before you roll it out. It's better to do that when it's cold, and let it come to room temperature during the final proofing stage.

The crumb cake topping

The tricky part of making a crumb cake topping for a fried doughnut is that, unlike the cake doughnut variations, the crumb can't bake along with the doughnut. So I needed to figure out how to make a crumb that was safe to eat (raw flour needs to be heat treated), wouldn't turn to mush when it came in contact with the glaze, and that wasn't too chunky on top of a doughnut.

Trying to replicate the exact style of crumb Entenmann's uses proved futile — their crumbs are perfect circles, which I assume are punched out of a sheet of dough or a long rope cut into tiny slices. Either way, it's far too much work for a home baker, so for this recipe we're using the classic crumb-making method of whisking a bunch of dry ingredients together in a bowl and then adding melted butter and mixing with a fork until crumbly.

Because crumb topping is usually designed to be baked, that's exactly what we're going to do here too. Not only does it help the crumbs firm up and get crunchy, it also heat treats the raw flour to make it safe to eat.

Line a sheet pan with a silicone mat, pour your crumb topping onto it, and bake for 10 minutes. Once it comes out of the oven and cools completely, you crumble it up even smaller. I even used a wire spider to sift out the biggest chunkiest crumbs and gave them a few pulses in my mini food processor.

The goal is to get a good ratio of small, dust-like crumbs and bigger, pea-sized crumbs so that your doughnut top is fully coated in the crumb topping. If you have all pea-sized crumbs you'll have lots of gaps between crumbs and your doughnut will look a bit naked.

a few quick notes on crumb cake doughnuts

• I used a 3.25" round cutter for these doughnuts and a 1.25" cutter for the doughnut holes (buy a set of color-coded cutters here) just like in my recipe for foolproof donut holes. I tested bigger and smaller doughnuts, but found that a 3.25" doughnut with 1.25" hole created the ideal surface area and crumb-to-doughnut ratio. My initial test batch used a 3.5" doughnut cutter but those doughnuts felt so huge and unwieldy — hard to fit in your mouth, especially once the crumb topping was added. If you go smaller, the crumbs overwhelm the top of the doughnut and hide the hole in the center.

• Fry up the doughnut holes and any excess dough scraps and toss them in sugar or dip them in leftover glaze. Because you cut these doughnuts out of a a sheet of dough, you will end up with extra dough. You can knead it back into a ball, pop it back into the fridge, roll it out again and cut more doughnuts... OR you can just cut up the remaining dough scraps into some fun bite-sized shapes and drop them in the fryer. No dough has to go to waste!

• Set your butter for the dough out to warm up the night before. The butter needs to be very soft — not a hint of chill or firmness to it. Otherwise it will take forever to incorporate into your dough and you don't want to be standing at your mixer for an hour adding butter, do you?

• Keep the dough cool. If your brioche dough gets too sticky to handle or starts to form air bubbles while you're cutting it, that's a sign that it's warming up and the yeast is starting to get active again. Pop it on a sheet pan and stick it back in the fridge to chill. You want that yeast activity to happen after you've cut the doughnuts, not before.

• Use minimal flour when rolling your dough out. One of my favorite things about a light brioche is that the dough is smooth and supple and stretchy, not sticky. You don't want a ton of flour on the surface of your doughnuts, so use minimal flour only if needed. I try not to use any, but depending on the temperature in your kitchen you might need to use a light dusting.

• Doughnuts are best enjoyed same-day.

yeast-raised brioche crumb cake doughnut FAQ

📖 Recipe