Giant Donut

Preheat the oven to 170ºC. Grease the mold with a little butter and flour. Unless you buy two molds, you have to do it in two baking, the ingredients of the cake are for a baking of one mold only. If you make two at a time, multiply the quantities by 2. If not, simply repeat twice the process of preparation and baking of the cake, which is what I have done.

In a bowl beat the eggs with the sugar at high speed for about 5 minutes, until the mixture turns whitish. Incorporate melted butter and vanilla extract and mix until combined.

In another bowl, sift the flour with the baking powder and salt. Add half of the flour mixture to the egg mass by mixing until lightly combined. Add buttermilk and mix until blended. Add the rest of the flour and mix just until the dough is smooth and without lumps.

Bake for about 45 minutes, until a toothpick comes dry. Remove from oven and allow to cool for about 15 minutes. After that time, and taking care not to burn, unmold on a grid and let it cool completely.

Wash the mold, grease it again and repeat the whole process again to make the other half of the cake of our giant donut.

While the two halves of the cake are cooling, prepare the filling cream. For this, beat the mascarpone with the icing sugar using it gets creamy, for about 1 minute. Add the cream that must be very cold and beat at high speed, for about 2 minutes. Add the two tablespoons of strawberry powder and beat until you have a homogeneous color.

To prepare the Italian meringue buttercream, you must first prepare the meringue. To do this, heat the sugar with water in a saucepan. Introduce a kitchen thermometer to control the temperature of the syrup.

Meanwhile, beat the egg whites in the blender bowl with the salt and vinegar at a low speed, so that it starts being foamy. When the temperature of the thermometer reaches 100 ° C, raise the speed of the mixer to medium-high.

When the temperature of the syrup reaches 118 ° C, remove from the heat and without stopping the mixer, pour into the whites very slowly and in the form of a yarn while still beating the whites at medium-high speed. Be very careful and do not pour the syrup on the moving rods or you can splatter and burn.

Continue beating at high speed for about 10 more minutes, until the meringue cools down. Before adding the butter make sure the bowl is cold, if necessary wait 5 or 10 minutes more for the meringue to cool.

Add butter little by little in pieces while continuing to beat at medium speed until all is integrated. Increase the speed of the mixer and beat the mixture for 5 minutes more. There is a moment when it seems to be split, but at the last minute of mixing it takes the right body, do not freak out.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave or the water bath and incorporate it into the buttercream when it has been slightly tempered. Mix a little bit more until the cream has a uniform color.

Before starting to assemble the donut I recommend that you prepare the colored sprinkles with fondant. You can of course use normal sugar sprinkles, but they will look too small for the size of the donut. Using small pieces of fondant of several colors, stretch and knead it in the form of small cylinders and cut it into pieces of about 1 cm. Allow to dry slightly before use.

To assemble the donut, the first thing you have to do is cut the cup of the biscuits so that they are perfectly flat and of the same height. Using a teaspoon, make a groove in the center of each half of the biscuits, that's where the filling cream goes. Try to make the groove as centered as possible and a depth of about 2 cm.

Fill the grooves with mascarpone strawberry cream until it is completely stuffed and flattened on the surface. Now (watch out for the dangerous part!) Put together the donut halves from the cream side. Do it very carefully so that when manipulating the half that goes on top it does not break.

It is time to give the first layer of crumbs stopper to the cake with the buttercream. Frost all of it with a thin layer of buttercream, smooth it with a clean flexible plastic film to flatten the curved areas. But do not worry if it is not perfect because you will be covered in fondant. Refrigerate for about 30 minutes for the buttercream to harden.

Frost with the second layer of buttercream and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes more. Meanwhile, you can prepare the pink fondant that imitates the glaze of the donut. Using the mold as a guide, cut into a baking paper a template that is of the dimensions of the mold, that is to say, first draw the silhouette and the hole and cut it.

Stretch the pink fondant until it is about ½ cm high. Place the template on the stretched fondant and using a blade, trim but not following the straight line of the template, do it making waves around it as a reference. The idea is to be irregular and when you put it on the donut it creates a glaze effect falling. It is difficult to explain, I hope you have understood.

Place the pink fondant on the donut and smooth the surface. Paint the entire fondant with a vodka using a brush and place the colored giant sprinkles before the vodka dries. And you already have your donut ready!!