'Healthier' doughnuts: a possibility?

What does it do?

It is not so much what it does as what it helps you do. The kit consists of four ring moulds and four moulds for filled doughnuts, plus a nifty cutter to create the ring doughnut shapes. You make the dough, let it rise, cut out the doughnuts and plonk them in the moulds to prove and bake.

Does it work?

I was really excited to get my hands on this kit - who doesn't love a doughnut? First problem - no obvious recipe, but a Google search produced one on the Lakeland site. (Lakeland has now placed a recipe on its website alongside the kit itself.)

An hour or so later, I had a nicely risen dough ready to cut out. Which is when problem two arose. The cutter only does ring doughnuts and there are only four ring moulds in the kit. How was I to cut out the doughnuts for the filled doughnut moulds? Lakeland suggests either making a looser mix to pipe into the moulds OR using a regular biscuit cutter of the right diameter - as I had. Or you could roll them by hand, but then why bother with the mould?

I rolled my dough too thinly - they should be at least 1cm deep, but the end result turned out of the moulds easily and the baked doughnuts - which I coated in icing sugar and cinnamon - got a thumbs up from my children.

Must have/maybe/not?

This would be a fun bit of kit to play with when cooking with children. It did make perfectly shaped round circle doughnuts, but only having four ring moulds was a pain.

The down side?

"Healthier" doughnuts gave me carte blanche to eat far more than necessary.

Price: £11.99, Retailer: Lakeland.co.uk