Doughnuts

You know what I love about working with dough? The weird fact that even though most doughs for breads, sweet breads, even pizza, etc., are basically all the same ingredients that are introduced just a little differently. That makes all the difference in texture in the end product and during the process. Most doughs for sweet things are soft and tender even when they are raw. Bread and pizza doughs are firm and hearty. This is fascinating to me and I love it when everything clicks and I can "feel" how the product will turn out.

I love all sweets but my favorite home made sweets have to be doughnuts. I make some pretty mean cookies and cakes but doughnuts always turn out beautifully. There is one particular chain of doughnut shops that has a flashing sign that alerts all in the vicinity that they are removing fresh doughnuts from their fryers. I used to drive about 20 miles on the off chance that the sign was blinking. Sometimes I would even make the drive and just loiter around the area until the sign flashed. This all came to an end when I discovered home made doughnuts.

Have you ever had a home made doughnut? They are not difficult to make. As a matter of fact the ingredients are quite simple. You take some AP flour, a little sugar, dash of salt, little bit of butter, milk or water, maybe eggs and yeast. That's it. Those innocuous ingredients merge to create a heavenly little bite. Yeast raised doughnuts are my favorite. They even smell like doughnuts when the dough is raw. Creepy, trippy and absolutely maaaahvelous. These cuties come together in about 3 hours with most of your time spent waiting for the dough to rise. The actual cooking time is over in about 4 minutes in 365 degree oil.

My sister put these together today and I made the toppings. I had to have glazed. The glaze is just confectioner's or icing sugar and a little water, some were topped with chocolate icing, or a cinnamon sugar mixture. The filling today was either cherry or raspberry preserves. The jelly doughnuts weren't really filled. I just took a bite of the doughnut, either icing glazed or sugar coated and slathered on the raspberry jam (my fave!!). The chocolate glazed got the cherry preserves, sort of like a black forrest doughnut. They may not have had the perfect round shape of those you can buy at the store but I must say they are definitely more delicious because a fresh doughnut is something everyone must try. You can use any doughnut recipe. My sister "M" followed The Joy of Cooking recipe for these doughnuts.