Sunday, November 2, 2008

I blame Jessie

It's totally her fault.I have doughnuts in my house. Great big homemade doughnuts. Honking gargantu-doughnuts.


And that is not a saucer they're on - that's a full-size 10.5" dinner plate.

I bought a doughnut cutter last year, but until I saw Jessie's doughnuts this morning, I'd forgotten all about it. (I used to use those little biscuit cutters with the removable centers, but all my centers seemed to have been permanently removed. From the house...)

I had several realizations as I was making this raft of doughnuts:
1) The recipe I always use is the one that should have a half-cup more flour, but since I've never gotten around to making a note of this, I forget every time.
2) This doughnut cutter is too big. The doughnuts turn out so big that I can only fit one at a time into my fryer.
3) Frying doughnuts one at a time makes a long drawn-out process an irritatingly long drawn-out process.
4) I wanted to be the owner of a plateful of doughnuts much more than I wanted to be the maker of a plateful of doughnuts.

Now normally I'm all about the process, with the product running a distant second. But I've found that, in the case of cookies (and doughnuts), the only thing I'm interested in is the product. Usually I remember this about halfway through the project.
Baking a cake or a pie is easy - one thing and you're done. It's like knitting a hat or scarf. But cookies and doughnuts go on and on and on. It's sort of like Second Sock Syndrome - but you're knitting socks for a centipede, so it's Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Sock Syndrome as well.

But seeing the smile on Madman's face as he walked through the door made up for it. "OOOOO! Doughnuts!"

3 comments:

Anna M said...

Another real easy fried treat is my version of donut holes. Make cream puff dough, pate choux? I think is the basic name, flour, eggs, butter and then drop by spoonfuls to fry in hot oil. Dust with powdered sugar. Yummmy!!!

Anonymous said...

Write the recipe modification down. It is your only hope.

Making the Madman happy was certainly worth it.

Anonymous said...

Those look SO GOOD, OH MY GOODNESS, HOLD ME BACK!!!

I think I would roll around in them like my dogs do in lush grass (older one) or something weirdly stinky (younger one).

NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM!