A cross between a doughnut and an apple turnover, these Sourdough Apple Fritters are a delicious treat that will be appreciated by both children and adults alike! With heaps of chunky apples encased in a fluffy doughnut exterior, these fried pillows are going to be gone before the icing sets!
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Ingredients
Don’t be disheartened by a long ingredients list in the recipe card for these apple fritters – you are likely to have most of them in your fridge and cupboards already. Here’s what you will need:
- milk: use dairy milk for best results.
- butter: salted or unsalted, but make sure to reduce the amount of salt in this recipe if using salted butter.
- caster sugar: also known as superfine sugar. It can be substituted by white granulated sugar, but make sure you knead the dough long enough for the sugar granules to dissolve completely.
- egg: medium in the UK, large in the US.
- plain flour: also known as all-purpose flour. Strong white bread flour will work as well.
- spices: we used cinnamon and nutmeg, but you can substitute the two with some mixed spice or pumpkin spice.
- salt
- sourdough starter: 100% hydration, active and bubbly (not discard).
- vegetable oil: for frying.
- apples: cored and chopped into 1.5cm cubes. You may choose your favourite variety, but we prefer tart apples, like Granny Smith, as the glaze provides lots of sweetness.
- light brown sugar: can be substituted with caster sugar or dark brown sugar.
- lemon: juice only.
- icing sugar: also known as confectioners sugar or powdered sugar.
Method
There are four main steps in making these Sourdough Apple Fritters: making the dough, preparing the apple filling, cooking the fritters and glazing them.
Step 1: Sourdough Apple Fritter Dough
In a small saucepan, heat the milk, butter and sugar until sugar dissolves and butter melts. Take off the heat and let it cool down to just warm.
In a bowl of your stand mixer (we use and love Kenwood), mix flour, cinnamon and salt. Then add the milk mixture, sourdough starter and an egg. Knead in the stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment for 10 minutes until you have a smooth and elastic dough. Shape it into a ball, place it into a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave in a warm spot for 4 hours to prove.
After 4 hours, place the dough into the fridge and leave to continue proving overnight.
Step 2: How to Prepare Apples for Sourodugh Fritters?
The next morning, cut the apples into small chunks (peel them if the skin is tough, but I tend to leave the skin on). Place the apples, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg and flour in a pan. Mix and stir occasionally, and cook over medium heat until apples are tender (about 10 minutes). Remove from the heat, cover and let the apples cool down completely.
Step 3: Assembling & Frying
Dust the worktop with flour. Roll the dough out into a rectangle of approximately 10cmx32cm. Using a stainless steel rolling pin really helps when rolling a stickier dough. Cut the rectangle into 8 pieces (5cmx8cm). Spread the apple filling on one half of each dough rectangle. Fold the other side over and pinch the edges together.
Place the shaped fritters on a baking tray lined with baking parchment and generously dusted with flour. Cover with lightly oiled cling film and leave in a warm spot for an hour.
Heat up oil in a small pan to around 180 C. You should have about 5 cm of oil. Fry fritters for approx 3 min on each side. Then place on a paper towel-lined plate to remove excess oil.
Step 4: Icing
Combine water and icing sugar in a small bowl. Transfer apple fritters to a wired rack whilst they’re still warm, and spoon the icing over them. Leave the icing to set and enjoy! The fritters are best served on the day that they are fried!
Deep-Fried vs. Shallow-Fried
Frittes, like doughnuts, are typically deep-fried. These particular Sourdough Apple Fritters are quite thick, due to a generous amount of apple chunks inside them, so shallow frying may not be an option. However, there is no need to add more oil than to cover the fritter doughnuts halfway up. First, you fry them on one side, then flip them and fry them on the other side, so both sides are cooked in oil.
We use a small pan to fry them – this ensures the minimal amount of oil used, but also means that fritters will be cooked in batches, taking a little more time.
Fritter Icing Variations
Every time we make the icing, my mum criticises it for being too thin. But that’s how we like our icing! Thin, and set quickly, so we can eat the fritters quicker! So we suggest making a runny mixture of icing sugar and water and dipping these Sourdough Apple doughnuts into it or simply spooning the icing on top and letting it drip down the sides.
You can always add more flavour to your icing by adding a pinch of cinnamon! Or try adding a couple of drops of lavender, orange blossom or almond essence! Absolutely delicious!
Recipe FAQs
The fritters are best served on the day that they are cooked. They are moist, soft and fluffy and the icing is nice and crisp! However, if you cannot go through all the doughnuts in one day, keep them in an airtight container after the fritters cooled down. They will taste great the next day, but the icing will likely become a lot wetter and they may be a little sticky to handle.
We used plain (all-purpose) flour to make these Sourdough Apple Fritters, however strong bread flour with higher gluten content will work well (and will make the dough easier to handle).
It depends! The dough for the fritters isn’t overly sweet (we only use 25g of caster sugar for the batch of 8 fritters), so you can use sweeter apples for the filling if you have a sweet tooth. However, with the sugar glaze and cinnamon sugar that goes into the filling, we recommend apple varieties that are slightly more sour, such as Granny Smith or Braeburn (we used the latter in this recipe).
This recipe is not designed to be extremely crispy. Since you’re adding the glaze on top of these Sourdough Fritters, you will end up with a doughnut-like (although different shape) treat that will have a thin layer of glaze which will soften the exterior of the fritter.
Having said that, your apple fritters should not be soggy. If they are, it may be due to a couple of things. First, you may have added the fritters to the oil too early, so they absorbed too much oil and, therefore, did not crisp up. Secondly, you should spread them out when cooling (ideally on a wire rack) so that they do not stew in their own residual heat. It’s important to note that these fritters are at their crispiest on the day that they are made.
Other Sweet Sourdough Bakes
If you keep a sourdough starter and are constantly on the lookout for great ideas to put it to good use, have a look at our recipes below:
- Sourdough Apple & Cinnamon Buns
- Sourdough Cruffins with Cinnamon Sugar
- Sourdough Brioche Loaf
- Sourdough Almond Croissants
- Sourdough Coffee & Date Bread
Recipe Card
Sourdough Apple Fritter Doughnuts
Ingredients
For the Dough:
- 35 ml milk
- 35 g butter
- 25 g caster sugar
- 1 egg medium
- 170 g plain flour
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 100 g active sourdough starter 100% hydration
- 300 ml vegetable oil for frying
For the Apple Filling:
- 2 small apples cored and chopped into 1.5cm cubes
- 25 g light brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon plain flour
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ lemon juice only
- 1 tablespoon water
- a pinch of nutmeg optional
Glaze:
- 90 g icing sugar
- 2 tablespoon water
Instructions
- In a small saucepan, heat the milk, butter and sugar until sugar dissolves and butter melts. Take off the heat and let it cool down to just warm.
- In a bowl of your stand mixer, mix flour, cinnamon and salt. Then add the milk mixture, sourdough starter and an egg. Knead in the stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment for 10 minutes until you have a smooth and elastic dough. Shape it into a ball, place it into a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave in a warm spot for 4 hours to prove.
- After 4 hours, place the dough into the fridge and leave to continue proving overnight.
- The next morning, cut the apples into small chunks (peel them if the skin is tough, but I tend to leave the skin on). Place the apples, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg and flour in a pan. Mix and stirring occasionally, cook over medium heat until apples are tender (about 10 minutes). Remove from the heat, cover and let the apples cool down completely.
- Dust the worktop with flour. Roll the dough out into a rectangle, approximately 10cmx32cm. Cut the rectangle into 8 pieces (5cmx8cm). Spread the apple filling on one half of each dough rectangle. Fold the other side over and pinch the edges together.
- Place the shaped fritters on a baking tray lined with baking parchment and generously dusted with flour. Cover with lightly oiled cling film and and leave in a warmspot for an hour.
- Heat up oil in a small pan to around 180 C. You should have about 5 cm of oil. Fry fritters for approx 3 min on each side. Then place on a paper towel-lined plate to remove excess oil.
- Combine water and icing sugar in a small bowl. Transfer apple fritters to a wired rack whilst they're still warm, and spoon the icing over them. Leave the icing to set and enjoy! The firtters are best served on the day that they are fried!
Notes
Nutrition
Amanda Wren-Grimwood
These doughnuts are such a treat and the apple filling is delicious. Thanks for the recipe.
Ieva
You are most welcome! Thanks for the lovely feedback! 🙂
Beth
Just the dough and glaze would have been enough to sell me, but then you added all the apple to the center. YUM!
Ieva
Just the mention of the word ‘doughnut’ is normally enough for me! 😀 😀 😀 Hope you like them if you decide to make them 🙂
Farah Maizar
These are so beautiful! Love that they are stuffed with apples, I can’t wait to try these out thanks for the recipe!
Ieva
Really hope you do try it! These doughnuts are delicious 🙂
Katherine
Oh wow! These are better than any donut shop!
Ieva
Thanks, Katherine 💗