Ruh-roh - doughnuts are easy to make!

So much doughnut goodness

*WARNING* People who are trying to lose weight should not know how easy it is to make these doughnuts. Read at your own risk.

I was going to post about something non-food-related this week. Then Randy had a brilliant idea. “We should make doughnuts,” he said. Of course we should! This was the best plan I'd heard in a long time.

We had only two requirements for the recipe we used: it had to be for risen donuts (not cake donuts) and it couldn't take very long to make. It was Wednesday afternoon, you see, so we didn't have time to wait for hours on end for the donuts to rise to the proper fluffy state.

After searching through a few recipes that took five hours or so, and one that only existed in video format (seriously, who DOES that?), Randy found this gem.Since we didn't have all the ingredients for the apple cider glaze (and reviews didn't entirely like it anyway) we used the glazes from this site.

There's really no way to go wrong with plain OR chocolate glaze.

Perfect size!

The dough took very little time to make – about 15 minutes. It took Randy less time to make the dough, roll it out and cut the doughnuts than it did for me to make a casserole for dinner. Unhealthy splurges like this should be more difficult to make so they're not so tempting!

Randy made the doughnuts ridiculously large, which made my inner fat kid extremely happy. My inner health nut was sent to her room for using bad language and so I could anticipate my sugar rush with less guilt-tripping.

Nice and thick, too!

After a one-hour rise – which only made them more mammoth – we fired up the deep fryer to cook these bad boys. Unfortunately, because we have a small fryer and the doughnuts were so ginormous, we could only cook one at a time. We only had eight to cook, but it still got tedious. Next time – and there will be a next time – I will use a frying pan so I can cut the cooking time in half and get on to the stuffing my face part of the experience!  There are few things as good as a still-warm doughnut.  

Once the doughnuts were all cooked, glazed, cooled, and the requisite pictures taken, we dug in. I appeased my inner health nut by sharing with my daughter. And then gave in to the fat kid by eating a second doughnut (I shared that one too). I did have to try one of each kind, right?  Really, the size was a good thing - it meant that we each only ate two the first day and two the second day.  If they were smaller, we'd have eaten many more!  It's the overall number that counts, right?

You can almost see through the glaze - add more!

I worried that the dough wouldn't be sweet enough (the recipe only has 2 tablespoons of sugar in it) but with the glaze, they were everything a doughnut should be, and avoided the too-sweet stage that many doughnuts fall into. These take almost all of their sweetness from the glaze; when I experiment with variations (and I will) that don't include glaze, I will probably add a bit more sugar to the dough. Randy noted that the chocolate-glazed version could be a bit sweeter; that glaze was thinner, so needed either a second dip or a thicker glaze.

The only thing keeping me from making these constantly is the fact that donuts don't keep very well, so the whole batch has to get eaten quickly. While I thoroughly enjoyed a doughnut with my morning coffee the next day, they had gotten a bit "sweaty", as doughnuts tend to do.  Pregnant or not, I just can't eat that many donuts. I guarantee I'll find reasons to make these again on a semi-regular basis, though. I just have to make sure there are other people around so I can't completely pig out on them!

I learned a few lessons from this experiment: 

1) I will keep eating doughnuts until no more remain. 

2) Zoey will fight me for her fair share of doughnuts

3) Glaze is a good thing; make it nice and thick

4) It's way too easy to make these and I'm at risk of turning into Homer Simpson.

5) I can't decide whether to spell them doughnuts or donuts and I probably went back and forth in this post.  Deal.

Linked to This Week's Cravings via the Daily Dish
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