Homemade pastry cream and peach preserves are stuffed inside these peach cream filled doughnuts. A tasty way to celebrate seasonal summer fruits!
Ever since visiting General Porpoise in Seattle, I have been chasing that same feeling: warm, pillowy doughnut that bursts with delicious filling the moment you bite in. I spent several weeks testing dough hydration, resting times, and fry temperatures to get my own version right- and this is it!
A from-scratch yeast doughnut piped full of vanilla pastry cream and jammy peach preserves. This isn’t a quick and easy 30-minute recipe. It’s not difficult to make, but it does require a bit of time. Luckily, you can spread the components over a weekend to make it less tiresome and more fun.
RELATED: When you’re ready for autumn flavors, move on to pumpkin cheesecake filled doughnuts, maple crullers, and sweet potato cake doughnuts.
Recipe Rundown
- Real bakery-style filled doughnuts, made at home. No shortcuts on the dough or the cream — this tastes like the ones from a proper doughnut shop.
- Two fillings in one bite. Vanilla pastry cream for richness, peach preserves for brightness. Together they taste like peaches and cream, but better.
- A great way to use late-summer peaches. If your peaches are a little too soft for eating out of hand, this is exactly where they belong.
- Freezer- and fridge-friendly components. The dough and preserves can both be made ahead, so fry day goes fast.
Make Doughnuts Over a Weekend
Real deal fried doughnuts can be intimating to new bakers. Yeast donuts are time consuming. These filled donuts require several components, but none of them are difficult on their own. Here’s how I’d map it out:
- DAY 1: Make homemade peach preserves and refrigerate. (Or, simply use your favorite store-bought peach jam/jelly/preserves. I won’t tell!)
- DAY 2: Cook and chill the pastry cream. Mix the yeast dough. The dough needs 6-12 hours of resting time in the fridge, so this is evening task.
- DAY 3: Cooking and assembly day! Fry, fill, and eat!
Start your preserves Friday and you’ll have warm, fresh doughnuts by Sunday morning.
Tips for Working with Dough
- Work with cold dough, straight from the fridge. Chilled dough is easier to manage than room temperature dough. Work quickly!
- A straight edge round cutter gives the cleanest cuts. Dip the cutter in flour to easily punch out the dough rounds.
- You can re-roll the scraps once, but stop there. A second re-roll overworks the gluten and gives you a dense, tough doughnut.
Tips for Frying
The majority of donuts shops fry their goods in vegetable shortening (or sometimes called “donut fry shortening” in the food industry). Since shortening in solid at room temperature, the fried donuts will look and feel less greasy compared to oil fried donuts.
FRYING 101: Donut Tips
- Use a candy thermometer or deep fry thermometer to monitor frying oil temperature. The temperature will fluctuate as you add raw dough to the pot. You will need to adjust heat as you go.
- A heavy bottomed sauce pot (cast iron or Dutch oven pot) retains and holds heat better than a thin pan. The more constant your oil temperature, the more even the doughnuts will cook.
- Set up your station before you start frying: timer, a heatproof slotted spoon, and a paper-towel-lined sheet pan within reach.
Assembly and Serving
To ensure that each doughnut has plenty of filling, I pipe pastry cream and peach preserves on two ends of the doughnut. There’s nothing more disappointing than a cream doughnut with very little filling. Don’t worry about overstuffing it. The doughnut isn’t filled until it feels heavy.
One important note: these are a same-day treat. Once filled, the pastry cream starts to soften the dough, so plan to serve them within a few hours of filling. Fry and fill on the day you plan to eat them, then call your people over. These are best shared immediately, still a little warm.
Frequent Asked Questions
The long, cold rest lets the gluten relax and the flavor develop, and it makes the enriched dough much easier to roll and cut.
I don’t recommend it for this particular dough. It’s built and hydrated specifically for frying, and baking will give you a very different (much less doughnut-like) texture. If you want a baked option, I’d start from a different base dough entirely.
Fill them as close to serving as possible, ideally within an hour or two of serving. The longer they sit filled, the softer and soggier the dough gets as the pastry cream releases moisture.
Peach Cream Filled Doughnuts
Ingredients
Peach Preserves:
- 20 oz sliced peaches, (about 4 cups)
- ¼ cup light brown sugar, (50 g) packed
- ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 teaspoon fresh squeezed lemon juice
Vanilla Pastry Cream:
- ⅓ cup cornstarch, (38 g)
- ¾ cup granulated sugar, (150 g) divided
- 2 cup whole milk, divided
- 4 large egg yolks
- ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, (28 g) softened
Dough:
- 2 ½ teaspoons dry active yeast, (8 g)
- ⅔ cup whole milk, heated to 100-110°F
- ¼ cup granulated sugar, (50 g)
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour, (455 g)
- 1 ½ teapoons kosher salt
- 8 Tablespoons unsalted butter, (113 g) softened
Other Components:
- 3 cups vegetable shortening, (550 g) for frying
- ½ cup granulated sugar, (100 g) for coating
Instructions
Peach Preserves:
- Combine peaches, sugar, salt, and lemon juice in a heavy bottomed sauce pot. Set over medium heat and bring to a boil. Lower heat and allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes until peaches are soft. Stir as necessary to prevent burning. Remove from heat and mash peaches using a muddler. Cool to room temperature. Transfer to a container and keep chilled in the fridge until ready to use.
Vanilla Pastry Cream:
- Line a quarter-sheet baking pan with plastic wrap, making sure the sides of the pan are also covered. Set aside.
- Pour 1 ½ cups milk into a large heavy bottomed sauce pot. Add salt and ½ cup sugar. Whisk together. Place over medium-high heat. Stir occasionally to make sure the milk does not burn along the sides or bottom of the pan. Bring to a boil.
- Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk together cornstarch and ¼ cup sugar. Add in remaining ½ cup milk and yolks. Whisk until smooth.
- Once milk has boiled, reduce heat. Slowly add a little bit of the milk into the cornstarch mixture. Whisk constantly to distribute the heat. Continue to add milk and whisk until only a couple tablespoons of milk are left in the saucepan. Pour all the egg-milk mixture back into the saucepan.
- Whisk constantly over medium-low heat until the custard has thickened. Keep whisking and let the custard come to boil to cook out the cornstarch flavor. Remove from heat. Whisk in butter until smooth. Add vanilla and whisk until combined.
- Pour the hot pastry cream into the prepared plastic wrapped sheet pan. Spread evenly. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for 10-15 minutes until the pastry cream has cooled to room temperature. Remove from freezer and transfer to an airtight container. Place plastic wrap directly on pastry cream to avoid condensation. Let chill in the refrigerator until ready to use.
Doughnuts:
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, dissolve yeast and 2 teaspoons of sugar in warm milk. Let sit for 5-8 minutes until mixture is foamy. Whisk in remaining sugar and eggs.
- Attach dough hook to stand mixture. Add half of flour mixture and salt. Mix on low speed until dough begins to come together. Add remaining flour and continue to mix until dough is shaggy. Slowly add butter and increase speed to medium. Knead for 3 minutes until mixture forms a smooth dough.
- Transfer dough to a lightly oiled large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to chill in the fridge overnight. (8-12 hours)
- On a floured surface, roll dough to about ½-inch thick. Using a 3 ½ or 4-inch round cutter, punch out doughnuts. Loosely cover rounds with plastic wrap. Let rest for 45-60 minutes until doughnuts are puffy.
- Add vegetable shortening to a large heavy bottomed saucepot (Dutch ovens and cast iron pans work best). Set over medium heat until oil reaches 350° F.
- Carefully place 2-3 doughnut rounds into hot oil. Do not overcrowd. Cook for 90 seconds to 2 minutes on each side, until golden brown. Use a slotted spoon to transfer cooked doughnuts onto a paper-towel lined baking sheet. NOTE: Oil temperature will change as you add raw doughnuts. Monitor oil temperature to make sure doughnuts do not burn.
- Toss warm doughnuts in sugar. Place on wire rack to cool until you are ready to fill doughnuts.
Assembly:
- Once doughnuts are completely cooled, use a chopstick to poke holes on each side of the doughnut.
- Prepare two pastry bags fitted with small round piping tips. Fill one bag with pastry cream, and the other bag with peach preserves.
- Squeeze about ¼ cup of pastry cream into each doughnut, filling both sides. Squeeze about 1 Tbsp of peach preserves into each doughnut. Serve immediately.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like this recipe? Rate & comment below!
I really didn’t know that you can prepare doughnuts at home so perfectly. Loved your recipe! Is it possible to use lime instead of lemon juice?
love the new look! also loving the sound of these doughnuts (peach cream sounds perfect for right now but come october i will be all. over. those pumpkin cheesecake ones!). i’m going to seattle for a few days soon, and general porpoise is definitely on my list :3
Thank you! Hope you have a great time in Seattle! There’s SO MUCH good food out there!
I am glad you are up for sharing! Because I am not sure I could start making something tonight and finish on Sunday:). My husband is the patient one in this respect.Thank you for devoting yourself to these over the summer, now I have a recipe to suggest to him:) I will wash all dishes. These are truly wicked!! Congrats on the site redesign- beautiful! And the new picture of you is so pretty!
Thanks so much! Ha, my husband is also the patient one. :)
OMG! These doughnuts look heavenly! Need to try the peach cream filling!
These filled doughnuts are so fabulous… love that peach filling!
I love peaches and I love doughnuts! These look amazing!
I’m embarrassed to say I could eat so many of these!
These donuts are so pretty!
These doughnuts look delicious!! I’ll be impatiently waiting for the pumpkin cheesecakes ones!
I love the new site and these yummy doughnuts! It’s cute that you put that these would need to be consumed immediately because I’m pretty sure they’ll be gone almost instantly in my house, haha!