Is this not the most beautiful glaze you've ever seen?  Seriously, the colour is ridiculously amazing, and 100% natural!  Go blueberries!

When I was in Portland a couple of months ago, my friend Clara tried Blue Star Donuts' blueberry basil bourbon doughnut, and it was the inspiration for these!  Discovering new flavour combos and being inspired by local restaurants is one of my favourite things about travelling, and creating recipes as a result is so much fun.

Now, some of you may be thinking...."blueberry AND basil, that's a weird combo", but I promise you that it's not weird!  It totally works, and the flavours complement each other so well.  And if you're still freaked out by the basil, you can always leave it out and just have a delicious plain blueberry glaze.  (But seriously....you'll be missing out!).

Blueberry Basil Doughnuts

recipe by: Kelsey Siemens

Directions:

1)  In a small bowl, mix together hot water, sugar, and yeast set aside for about 10 minutes until nice and frothy.

2)  In a large bowl, whisk together yeast mixture, milk, sugar, salt, egg and shortening.

3)  Slowly whisk in 1 1/2 cups of flour.

4)  Gradually add in remaining flour (1 1/2 cups), half a cup at a time, stirring with a wooden spoon (or you can use your mixer and a dough hook) until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. *You may not need to use all of your flour!

5)  Knead by hand for about 5 minutes, or until your dough is nice and smooth.

6)  Place the dough into a greased bowl, cover with a clean dish towel, and place somewhere warm to rise until it has doubled in size (about half an hour).

7)  Turn the dough onto a floured surface, and use a rolling pin to gently roll it out to about 1/2" thickness.

8)  Cut with a doughnut cutter (or you can use two round cookie cutters, one large and one small).  Cover all doughnuts with the towel again, and let rise until doubled.

9)  Heat oil in a deep-fryer or a large electric skillet to 350 degrees (you can use a large, deep skillet on your stove, but it's harder to control the temperature of your oil safely).

10)  Very carefully, place your doughnuts into the hot oil.  Fry doughnuts on each side until they are a very light brown.

11)  Remove doughnuts from hot oil, and place on a cookie sheet lined with paper towel.

12)  Repeat until all the dough has been used, including the leftover doughnut holes from the middle of the doughnuts!

13)  Dip doughnuts in glaze, and serve!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup hot water (not boiling)

1/2 tsp sugar

2 1/4 tsp yeast

2/3 cup milk

1/4 cup white sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 egg

3 Tbsp shortening

3 cups flour

Blueberry Basil Glaze

recipe by: Kelsey Siemens

Directions:

1)  Add your blueberries, basil, and half and half together in a blender and puree.

2)  Once your mixture is smooth, transfer it to a bowl and slowly whisk in the icing sugar until smooth.

*To adjust the thickness, just add a tiny bit of half and half or icing sugar.

3)  Dip fresh doughnuts in the glaze, and serve!

Glaze:

1 cup blueberries (fresh is great, but frozen will work as well)

1 tbsp fresh basil, finely chopped

3 tbsp half and half (or milk is fine)

3 cups icing sugar

Also, I just had a Blueberry Bismarck at Lucky's Doughnuts in Vancouver this weekend, and now I have the most incredible need to make them as well.  Because the only way to make these doughnuts better is to pipe the full of blueberry jelly!

-Kelsey