Part of what I love about the girls' names is that they were both popular 100 years ago and many people with those names are now great-grandmas. Both names evoke a vision for me of sweet old ladies rocking away together on a porch. I pray Ella and Sadie will live meaningful lives full of love and will be enjoying each other on a front porch somewhere many years from now.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Doughnuts!!

So much snow means so much opportunity to do things we'd never normally have time for! Like making doughnuts! The idea had never even crossed my mind but my sister-in-law Stacy made them on the first day of the snow (did I mention we've had 2 Blizzards within a week and have about 3 1/2 feet of snow on the ground and 6 foot drifts right now?) and her pictures on Facebook looked so good! Plus, it seemed like such a cool thing to try-I've never deep-fried anything in my life! It was kind of surreal to make something I didn't really think I could make!

We used a Food Network Alton Brown Recipe but per Stacy's suggestion used vanilla instead of the nutmeg. We also did a half batch.

Step 1: Leave dough mixture to rest in the bowl for an hour


Step 2: Roll out dough with lots of flour and make 2 1/2 inch circles. We used the top of a Pam cooking spray container :-)


Step 3: Make the inner holes-we used the cap of the vanilla extract :-) Gotta get creative when you don't have fancy baking tools.


Step 4: Let the dough rest (we ended up letting it rest then storing it in the fridge overnight because we ran out of time/energy to finish)

Step 5: Fry 'em up!




(I LOVE this picture!)

Step 6: Toppings!

Cinnamon Sugar


Vanilla glaze


And of course, with a 4 year old girl in the house, pink sprinkles

VARIATION: Fry up the no-hole variety for some Jelly donuts


Fill those by 1)making a hole with a toothpick
2)filling a ziploc bag with strawberry preserves
3)filled 'em up!



Step 7: Dig in! They were all really tasty :-)

7 comments:

  1. I love the close-up shots, as well! And they look SO delicious!!

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  2. FANTASTIC pictures!! You're getting good at this :-)

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  3. Schley-thanks! Spoken like a true pregnant woman :-)

    Amy-Thanks! I was so glad I got good pics (ie food porn);-)

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  4. Great pics and fab experience. Super frying pan shot. You made everything look so tasty. We never made donuts. Now I regret it. Please invite me to your next donutfest. I'd love to be an official taster!!

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  5. These look really good! Reminds me of when I decided one Saturday morning that I was going to make bagels from scratch. It took forever, and they didn't look quite as appetizing as your doughnuts, but they were edible. ;-)

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  6. Do you have a thermometer to test the oil temp? I don't and for that reason I've never deep-fried either. Afraid I'd make mush or something.

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  7. EG-we don't have a candy thermometer-we just watched a you tube video about what the batter should do in the oil when it's the right temp and dropped a few little peices in until it bubbled well :-) So, maybe beginners luck but with no thermometer, they all came out well!

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