I'm Josie Weitzenbauer, and welcome to Léché Desserts!
We're making some donuts today. So, today we're going to make:
the Double-Chocolate Brownie, which is one of my son's favourite; Lemon Meringue, and we will probably get to do the Cheescake as well.
Léché has been around for 5 years now. We're going to be celebrating our anniversary in the fall, which is very exciting.
I've been a Pastry Chef for 13 years, travelling and working all over the place,
and having a great time doing it. I'm excited I get to show you some of our stuff today.
We always start with the water, and we always put a piece of old dough.
It's fermented piece of dough, which adds a lot more flavour.
And then, we add the yeast and sugar; we got to add our fats: so some oil and some shortening.
So then, this is going to do its thing, it's going to start bubble a little bit, and then we will be able to add our dry ingredients.
It's just flour and salt.
So I don't know if you can see, but there's a couple bubbles starting to happen in there.
It's starting to activate in eating the sugars in the dough, so we're going to now add the flour because it's starting to be active.
[whir of machine starting]
So, we'll let that do its thing!
And it should come together, it'll hold or it'll get stuck into to the dough hook, and the bowl will be nice and clean.
That's what you're looking for when you're making any kind of bread dough. The elasticity --- it's not too sticky or too dry.
[music]
Now you have this lumpy, little dough that we're going to knead into a nice, uniform ball;
and it's going to proof again--- or proof for the first time on the table.
And while that's happening, we get all our donut stuff ready.
So, you just want it nice and smooth, and uniform.
There we go. And then, we just cover with the plastic so it can proof and not dry-out.
And then... we'll see it in a few minutes!
So, we're going to make a few toppings for a Double-Chocolate Brownie Donut and our Lemon Meringue.
We make a real chocolate ganache for our donuts.
It's really just chocolate and cream.
And then, this is just going to sit on a bain-marie and melt, and it will come together.
The Meringue --- we make a Swiss Meringue. There are all kinds of different meringue, but this is one that also sits on a bain-marie
and the sugar and eggs melt together.
It just makes for a lighter, fluffier meringue; and it's a little bit more stable than a French one, which is just raw sugar and eggs.
So, that's just going to sit on a bain-marie too until the ganache is done, and then we'll have some meringue and ganache.
Show you guys the ganache. This is, after the chocolate's melted with the cream, this is what we have as a result.
And that's our lovely ganache, so we'll let this rest until we're ready to use it.
So now, the dough is proofed once on the table. We're going to cut the donuts and put them on the racks that go directly into the fryer.
So, we're going to cut some donuts! We cut all our donuts by hand. Imagine, we do thousands of donuts a day. You get pretty fast at doing it.
[rolling pin bang]
So when ever you're cutting donuts, you're trying to get as much yield as you can out of the first dough.
Like out of this dough, because we can't use the scraps because they get too tough and they're very difficult to manipulate.
So this is what we put, we keep this old dough and put it back into the new dough.
So, these would be our "fillers", this is what we have for filler donuts.
And if you want the holey ones, you just got to put a hole in it! And that's what happens...
They all have a very unique shape and form they take-on on their own. They're never one the same.
[laughs]
[metal cutting and banging]
And once they double up in size, we're going to fry them up.
Now, our donuts have proofed again for the second time, and are
nice and fluffy, and there's lots of air pockets, so now it's time to fry them.
So, this whole thing just drops right into the fryer. It's a little precarious.
And then they just float about for a little while. I mean, it doesn't take very long.
It's like a minute or two to fry.
And typically, why there is a hole in a donut is because it cooks more evenly and doesn't, like, flip about.
Sometimes when you have filled donuts, they tend to roll around in the fryer and it's very difficult to manage
so that's why they put a hole in it.
We typically fry about 70 donuts on a tray, and that happens over 100 times a day. Isn't that crazy?
So as soon as there's a little colour on them, you can flip them.
[music]
And then they cool on the rack next to it, and that's it!
Got a nice, fried, fluffy dough!
I'm going to show you guys our Ice Cream Sandwich.
It's just a vanilla ice cream, and then we sandwich it in a fresh donut.
[ice cream machine]
Et voilà!
[chuckles]
I'm going to show you guys how we garnish our donuts now.
We're going to start with the Cheesecake.
We take a "holey" donut and cut like you are making a sandwich,
and then we make a no-bake cheesecake. So, it's set cream cheese, vanilla, and sugar.
We freeze it and we cut it in rounds to make the shape of the donut.
We literally just sandwich it in the donut, and then to make the classic cheescake we all know
it's a little bit of mixed-berry compote on top
and some vanilla streusel, like the crumb, kind of like graham-base we do on that.
And that's our Cheesecake Donut.
So for the Double-Chocolate Brownie, I use the ganache we made earlier. It's nice to let it set a little while so
it thickens up so you get a nice glaze of chocolate on the donut.
This is called a "half-dip".
Give it a little twist, then you want to pull it out and get all the excess off of it.
I guess we can top it with a little brownie piece that we make homemade.
We add a little fleur de sel on it to give it a little kick.
Now, we're going to do the Lemon Meringue.
So, we make our homemade lemon curd, and then we set it, and we put it in our piping bags to stuff the donuts.
You want to fill it up as much as you can. You can actually see it fill up a little bit.
And then, we top it with our meringue, and to finish it --- we toast it.
[music outro]
Guys, thanks for watching! I hope you guys learned a little bit about what we do here.
Whenever you're in Montreal, come check us out. We're in Saint-Henri.
You can look us up on Instagram and Facebook, as well.
Don't forget: We have lots of vegan options and lots of little treats for you to check out.
See you soon!