Whether you’re tasting your way through Sebastopol’s apple country or exploring the orchards of Camino, apple cider doughnuts are a classic part of the fall experience.

You can make them at home by reducing apple cider into an intense, apple-flavored syrup and combining it with ingredients you likely already have on hand — flour, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon. Go traditional and roll the crisp, glistening, just-fried results in cinnamon-sugar or drizzle the doughnuts with an apple cider glaze, like this recipe from Martinelli’s, the iconic apple cider company founded in 1868.

Apple Cider Doughnuts

Serves 12

Ingredients

2 cups Martinelli’s Apple Cider

3½ cups flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 eggs

½ cup brown sugar

¼ cup sugar

5 tablespoons melted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

Oil for frying

Apple cider glaze (see recipe below) or cinnamon sugar to finish

Directions

In a small saucepan, bring cider to a boil over medium-high heat and cook for about 8 minutes, until reduced to 1 cup. Set aside to cool completely.

In a large bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon.

In a separate large bowl, cream together eggs, sugars, melted butter and cooled apple cider.

Pour the wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. (Dough will be sticky.) Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the fridge to chill for one hour (or up to overnight).

Sprinkle flour over a flat surface and roll out the dough to about ½-inch thick. Use a doughnut cutter (or two different sized round cutters) to cut as many doughnuts as possible.

Fill a frying pan with 1 inch of oil heated to 325 degrees. Working in batches, gently drop in the doughnuts and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, then flip them and fry for an additional minute or so until golden brown. Be careful not to let them burn. Let them drain on paper towels to soak up the excess grease for 5 minutes, before dipping in glaze or rolling them in cinnamon sugar.

Apple Cider Glaze

In a bowl, whisk together 3 cups powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla and ½ cup Martinelli’s Apple Cider until smooth. Carefully dip both sides of each doughnut into the glaze or drizzle glaze over the top. Place dipped donuts on a wire cooling rack over a sheet pan to catch any excess glaze. Allow glaze to set for about 20 minutes and enjoy.

— Created by Like Mother Like Daughter for Martinelli’s.com. Reprinted with permission from Martinelli’s.