Baked Nutella Doughnuts and Less than 10 hours of sunlight

So it has happened.  We are under 10 hours of daylight a day now, and losing about 6 1/2 minutes a day.  It's all downhill from here, the dark, the cold, the flannel pants, the cuddling by the fire...
Luckily, we have the holidays coming up and that keeps us entertained until after the new year.  We also have some fun things coming up, Jerry Seinfeld is coming to Fairbanks soon, we already have our tickets.  UAF hockey season has started, Dave will have snow to shovel, and I'm starting a mosaic of the sun for the back yard.

We really have to keep up our strength during the long, dark winters so I'm bulking up for winter and starting with baked Nutella Doughnuts.  As you know, Nutella makes everything better and everyone feel better.  If I'm not eating it by the spoonful, I'm adding it to anything I can, this is the perfect combination of warm, cakey doughnut and melty, soft Nutella.  My, these are so good, I can eat them all myself.  I got this recipe from the blog Gingerbread Bagels.  It is brilliant.

Baked Nutella Swirl Doughnuts
adapted from Gingerbread Bagels
(makes 12 doughnuts)
2 cups cake flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup buttermilk (at room temperature)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten and at room temperature
2 Tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 Tablespoons Nutella

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Sift the cake flour, sugar, baking powder and kosher salt into a large bowl. Mix it up.
Add in the buttermilk, eggs, melted butter and vanilla extract. Gently mix and fold everything together. Be careful to over mix the batter.
Put the batter into a piping bag fitted with a large round decorating tip.
Pipe the batter into a lightly greased doughnut pan.
Put 1/2 Tablespoon of Nutella on each top of each doughnut. (the batter)
Using a knife, swirl the Nutella around.
Bake the doughnuts at 425 degrees F for 9 minutes.
Remove the doughnuts from the pan and enjoy!

October 15, 2012     Daylight 9 hours, 40 minutes, 31 seconds     Temp. 24 ºF