The Daily Dish: Double Chocolate tofu donuts at RING baked tofu donuts

Today we’d like to introduce you to Canoga Park’s RING baked tofu donuts.

How did you end up in the restaurant business?
I (Mitsu) and my fiancé (Aya) are running this business. My fiancé is pastry chef. We were thinking about selling some Japanese food in the US someday.

One day, we got a first idea. There is my favorite and very popular sponge cake called Castella in Japan. Castella is not popular in the US. We have been looking for something not in the US yet. This is it. We thought we can sell Castella in the US. However, there is one big problem. It is very hard to sell things nobody knows.

We got a second idea that how about selling Castella with donuts shape. So it is baked donuts with Castella taste. We started to make recipe. However, it was very difficult than we thought. We got stuck.

We got a third idea when we saw Japanese TV show introducing very popular fried tofu donuts in Japan. Wow, how about we add tofu in our recipe. We made perfectly moist and tasty baked donuts which we had been looking for.

After that, we started to look for best ingredients to make our donuts taste better. We tried to use organic ingredients supplied from local people.

It took about 2 years and made more than 300 recipes until we satisfied the taste of donuts.

Best ingredients:

TOFU, SOY MILK(from Gardena , CA)
Soy products are from MEIJI TOFU which only uses Non-GMO soybeans.

FLOUR
Rice Flour is from KODA FARMS(South Dos Palos, CA). This flour is cold-rolled milled on site from California grown, pure, unadulterated rice – nothing has been added. Special grinding technique to keep the flavor, aroma and nutritional value.

SUGAR
We use our own blend of natural sugar. TREHA® trehalose of Hayashibara in Okayama, Japan mixed with organic cane sugar.

EGG
We only use organic eggs from chickens that only eat natural food.

YOGURT
We use fat free Greek yogurt to add healthy creaminess.

HONEY (From Long Beach, CA)
We use cold packed, unheated and raw honey from HONEY PACIFICA.

BUTTER (From Petaluma, CA)
We use organic cultured butter from PETALUMACREAMARY, which has been around over 100 years, for its sweet flavor and fresh aroma of yogurt.

MATCHA
100% Japanese Matcha Green Tea from Japan.

Our donuts are freezer friendly, microwave safe!!

*Please note: All Gluten-free, GMO-free and Nuts-free.

We’d love to learn more about the struggles you’ve had along the way.
It was not easy. There were two big challenge we had. First challenge was to find best ingredients for our donuts. We went a lot of farmer’s market, small and big super market, and searched internet for organic and local ingredients.

We look for it, test it. Repeat, repeat, repeat…many times until we satisfied. We are still improving our receipt. It is endless though.

Second challenge was to find good property. This is our first time business, so many landlord did not want to take any risk to lease property for us. I understand their thought. It took one and half years to find our Canoga Park location.

Tell us something interesting or unique about RING baked tofu donuts.
Baked tofu donut by itself is very unique. However, our way of making donuts is also very unique.

Baked Tofu Donuts process:

• Make donuts batter. Only using the selected high quality ingredients.
• Must lay 24 hours in the refrigerator the donuts batter.
• Bake donuts.
• Must lay another 8 hours in the refrigerator the baked donuts. This allows the appropriate aging time for donuts to mature and develop their optimum flavor and texture.
• Then finally, it’s ready to eat.