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October 1, 2019

I made Cockroach Boston cream donuts, one Pinterest's top Halloween recipes

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I made the top 10 Halloween recipes of 2019 on Pinterest which included Cockroach Boston cream donuts. Yup, I made donuts that looked like cockroaches which thoroughly freaked out all my friends and family. This is quickly becoming an annual tradition for me, as last year was the first time I tried my hand at making the top 10 Pinterest Halloween recipes of 2018. Out of all 10 recipes, these donuts were by far the hardest, taking about five hours to make. That being said, they were the most creative recipe I saw and definitely had a lot of tongues wagging at the office so to me they were worth it to make. So read ahead to learn about all the trials and tribulations of making the recipe to decide if you want to make it for you and your ghoulfriends this Halloween!

Cockroach Doughnuts

Recipe IRL:

PHOTO: I made Pinterest's top 10 Halloween recipes of 2019, which included Boston cream donuts that look like cockroaches.
I made Pinterest's top 10 Halloween recipes of 2019, which included Boston cream donuts that look like cockroaches.

I must admit that this recipe weighed on me for weeks. I was so nervous to attempt this and balked at the amount of hours I knew it'd end up taking. It took me five hours by the way. Yes, you heard that right, five whole hours. I was definitely proud of the outcome though and I will say that this recipe is the one that was the "talker" amongst all my friends when I told them I was doing this project and I'm sure it'd be a talker at any Halloween party too.

I definitely had some hiccups along the way in making this recipe, the biggest of which was that my dough, after its first rise, was such a sticky and wet consistency. It was impossible to knead. I must have added three whole cups of flour to make it manageable, and I wish I'd had the foresight to add some more sugar to it too because the end result could have used it.

Cutting the dough with oval cookie cutters wasn't a problem. I used both 3" and 4" for variety but wish I'd just used 4" because the bigger they are the easier they are to fill with cream. I got impatient waiting another hour for the dough to have its second rise so I put them in the hot oil a little more quickly than I should have and some ended up the nice puffy quality I wanted but some were too flat for the cream filling.

I also wish I'd cut the extra dough strips to be used for the "legs" much thinner than I did. They puff up quickly in the hot oil and they look more like cockroach legs and antennae if they are really thin. Side note: I realized while I was making the "cockroach legs" that if you throw some powder sugar on it it's basically a funnel cake recipe!

Making the Boston cream filling was actually fun and it tasted great. I kept eating it with a spoon for the duration of the rest of the recipe because it was so good. I will say that the vanilla bean paste was not only expensive but hard to find so honestly I'd try to find an alternative and maybe use vanilla extract instead. It probably won't taste exactly the same but will save you the trouble and the money.

I fumbled my way through piping the filling into the donuts (wow, that's not easy) but making the chocolate glaze was easy. Besides the making of the dough, the hardest part of this recipe was the decorating. Dealing with sticky caramel is never fun and I definitely suggest using a pizza cutter to cut the caramel into strips like the recipe calls for. At first I tried with a knife but the caramel kept getting stuck. I found cutting the caramel strips down to size pretty hard and it took me a long time to decorate all the cockroaches.

I used black cookie icing to "paint" the donuts with and it worked just as fine as food dye since it's a thin consistency. Dealing with the glazed, painted, caramel lined donuts was a messy business and after many attempts with poking and prodding I found it way too hard to insert the legs and antenna into the donuts. Instead I only inserted the antenna and laid the donuts on the legs to give it the effect without driving myself nuts. Overall, this recipe screams creativity and will definitely spook out guests, but it's a lot of work and takes a lot of patience so don't say I didn't warn you!

PHOTO: Making the cockroach Boston cream donuts was a very messy business as the caramel strips were sticky and the chocolate glaze and black frosting made them hard to handle without making a mess.
Making the cockroach Boston cream donuts was a very messy business as the caramel strips were sticky and the chocolate glaze and black frosting made them hard to handle without making a mess.

Recipe reprinted courtesy of Jeromina Juan.

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PHOTO: I made Pinterest's top 10 Halloween recipes of 2019, which included Boston cream donuts that look like cockroaches.
I made Pinterest's top 10 Halloween recipes of 2019, which included Boston cream donuts that look like cockroaches.

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Sending you all bugs and hisses this Halloween!