Use up the Box to Make Some Donuts

Hey! I wanted to let my readers know about a recipe contest sponsored by Hungry Jack instant potatoes, buttermilk pancake mix and syrup. It's called Use up the Box, and that's literally all you have to do to enter. Create an original recipe that uses at least 1 cup of Hungry Jack's potatoes or pancake mix, or 1/4 cup of syrup. The lucky grand prize winner will receive a year's worth of groceries. I love that prize! Head over here and check it out. Then get out your whisks and start creating. Just a little food for thought: my favorite use for instant potatoes. Remember my maple glazed buttemilk donuts? Instant potato flakes are the secret to their tender texture. I guess the people over at HJ know it too, since I spotted this recipe for bacon-sugar donuts on their website that I can't wait to try. Count on bacon to show up everywhere, even on donuts. (Photo from Hungry Jack) Here's the recipe from Hungry Jack Chef Adam Gertler. If you try it before I do, let me know what you think.

Bacon Sugar Donuts

(My Estimated Cost: $4.00)

Ingredients:
DOUGHNUT BITES
2/3 cup water
2/3 cup Hungry Jack® Instant Mashed Potato Flakes
1 large egg yolk
1 tbsp. Crisco® Pure Vegetable Oil, plus additional for frying
1 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon Hungry Jack® Buttermilk Complete Pancake & Waffle Mix (Just Add Water)
BACON SUGAR COATING
1/2 cup sugar
4 fully cooked bacon slices, heated until crisp
Preparation Directions:
COMBINE water and instant potato flakes in large bowl. Stir until moistened. Add egg yolk, 1 tablespoon oil, sugar and vanilla; mix well. Gradually stir in 1 1/2 cups pancake mix.
SPRINKLE work surface with remaining 1 tablespoon pancake mix. Turn dough out onto work surface. Knead dough until well blended, about 1 minute. Shape into a 4-inch disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill 1 hour or overnight.
For Bacon Sugar Coating: MINCE cooked bacon in food processor until very fine. Add sugar; pulse 2 to 3 seconds just until blended.
POUR oil into large heavy saucepan to 1-inch depth. Heat oil to 350ºF.
ROLL out dough to a 1/2-inch thickness on floured surface. Cut out small rounds using a 1-inch round pastry cutter or cut into 1-inch squares using a sharp knife. Working in batches, fry dough 30 to 60 seconds or until puffed and golden brown on all sides. Drain on paper towels. Roll in Bacon Sugar Coating. Serve warm.

I'd love it if one of my readers could take home the Grand Prize. Get crackin', everybody.

Be back soon with those buttery crescent rolls.

Coming Mid October: Cookie Bookie Week

PS If you like this post, send your friends over. There's always room for more at my table.

Fried Dough...It's Always Good.

For the 1.389 percent of you out there who are not dieting in January, I present Mrs. Vogel's Sherben, a treat for my Tuesdays with Dorie weekly on-line baking club. These are yummy, but that's really no surprise. Have you ever eaten a bit of fried dough that wasn't? I highly recommend a batch after an afternoon of ice skating with slippery young charges.

Despite being tugged at, yanked on, and otherwise put in precarious situations by little hands, I never fell down once. That merits a bit of deep fried dough, don't you think?

Some January afternoon, when you feel like throwing caution and cholesterol to the wind, give these naughty babies a try. The recipe is here with beautiful pictures, I might add.
I'll be back tomorrow with restraint, penance, and Beef with Barley Soup in the Crockpot.

Apple Cider Donuts

I couldn't wait any longer, not one more minute. I had to make these donuts last night. I'd been dragging the recipe around from a magazine insert, salivating from dusk to dawn. The madness had to end. And such delectable madness they were. I still think the buttermilk maple are my favorite, but there's room in my heart for more than one toroid. (I only know the word toroid from my crossword puzzle obsession; it means donut shaped.) The recipe and pic came from Home Made Simple, link below.

Click here for the recipe.

And now that you're here, can you do me a quick favor? Vote for my French's recipe one more time. There's just a few days left, so don't forget to vote every 24 hours. I'm hoping to become a finalist so I can get a trip to NYC.

I'm off to class, running a little late as usual. Tonight my students are analyzing the film Sense and Sensibility, looking for characteristics of the Age of Reason and the Romantic Era. Should be fun for all my Jane Austen fans.

I'll be back tomorrow with that hearty beef stew with cider for Halloween.

See you then.

Jelly Donuts At Last

The Quiet Man and I were ambling the streets of London last year when we spotted this pastry shop. I'm not a big fan of fussy desserts. I prefer straightforward American style treats, like brownies, chocolate chip cookies, lemon meringue pie, strawberry short cake, and donuts. At the edges of the case, almost wedged out by opera cakes dripping with ganache and flaky squares of millefeuille, was a plump and pillowy jelly donut. I plunked down my pounds and nibbled my way around Picadilly Circus with a dusting of powdered sugar as lipstick. It was phenomenal. We met up with my siblings in front of a theatre to see 39 steps and I shared what I could of my jelly donut. My brother raced back to the pastry shop to buy his own jelly donut, but they were all gone. Mine was the last. (Ha, ha, Roy. That serves you right for all the chocolate chip cookies you have snatched out of my hands in our childhood. ) After our trip, I thought a lot about the food we ate in Europe: the crackly loaves of French bread, the creamy soft fresh mozzarella, the chocolate chip gelato, the dandelion-yellow butter from the Isle of Guernsey. But most especially, I thought about that London jelly donut and I knew I had to make them mine. All mine.

I scouted out a few jelly donut recipes, but most of them called for a shocking amount of butter. Blame it on our modern fear of fats, but somehow it just seems wrong to fry up blocks of butter in hot oil. My friend Mary Anne over at Meet me in the Kitchen made some reasonably fattening buttermilk donuts recently so I thought I'd use her recipe and tinker around. I shaped the dough into holes with the top of and old perscription pill bottle. After the donut holes were fried, I used a medicine dropper to inject some warmed jelly into the center. Why, just look at all the multi-tasking you can do with your leftover medicinal supplies! Prudy's penny pinching pharmaceuticals!

A light snowing of powdered sugar over the tops and they were ready to share. Yummy, yummy, yummy. I had loads to share with the Memorial Day visitors at my house and the visitors over at my mom's also. And they didn't even have to head all the way to London to get one. Although I wouldn't mind heading back just for another jelly donut on Picadilly Circus. It'd be worth it. Especially if I could get the last one again.

Money Saving Tips:

If you don't have buttermilk on hand, measure 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar into the bottom of a 1 cup measure. Pour in milk to the top. The most expensive part of making the donuts is the frying oil, so be sure to get it on sale in a large quantity. You can reuse the oil to make french fries the next day, to ge the most for your money. But then again, it might be better just to save frying for a once in a while treat. You decide.

Jelly Donut Holes

Estimated Cost: $4.00

1 cup buttermilk

1 large eggs, beaten

1/2 cup sugar

2 and 1/2 cups sifted flour

1 teaspoon (baking) soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 pinch nutmeg

2 tablespoons melted butter

1/4 cup strawberry or raspberry jelly, warmed
Combine buttermilk, eggs and sugar and blend well.
Beat in sifted dry ingredients.
Then stir in melted butter.
Roll or pat dough on floured board about 1/4 inch thick and cut with 2 1/2-inch doughnut cutter. Fry in hot fat (canola oil) (375° F) till golden brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels. Use a medicine dropper of pastry bag fitted with a tip to inject jelly deep inside the donut. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Makes dozens of doughnut holes.

Coming First Light of Tuesday:

Dorie's Cinnamon Cake and Premature Labor

and then let's get some dinner going around here, for Pete's sake!

Buttermilk Donuts with Maple Glaze

An important distinction:Because I sew my two little charge's Halloween costumes, I feel I have left my readers with the mistaken notion that I am an accomplished seamstress. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's a reason why I almost only sew Halloween costumes. My costumes look unmistakably homemade. (Photographic evidence coming later this week.) There's a certain kitschy charm to a less than perfect looking costume, made by a frazzled mum too frugal for Disney store prices. For this reason I cannot sew clothing for every day useage. Those uneven hems and lopslided sleeves, so endearing on October 31st, look like something out of the Grapes or Wrath every other day of the year. And while I'm a not much better than mediocre seamstress, I confess to another talent: I am pretty good at making donuts.

No, that's not quite true. I really am quite good at making homemade donuts. I ought to be; I've been on a decade long quest to get it just right. I'm a firm believer that donuts should be a once-a-year, Halloween season kind of treat. (Now watch me eat my words with maple glaze on top.) This year, I invited my parents over for homemade donuts and wild hijinks, compliments the two charges. My mother, a notoriously particular and highly proficient cook, was smitten immediately. So the very next night, she got together with a neighbor and made my donut recipe, dropping off a batch of fresh hot donut holes at our house. And two nights later, my brother and his five charges and wife were passing through town and my mother convinced me to make them yet again! Oh, sweet deep-fried mama! So even though in word I recommend making them once a year around Halloween, please don't blame me if you end up making them three times in the next four days. Perhaps you will discover a hidden talent for donut making yourself. It's easier than sewing new clothes, ahem, which I might have to do if I don't stop making donuts soon.
Money Saving Tips: Homemade donuts are pretty inexpensive, especially if you only use an inch of oil, like I do. You can save the oil, strain it and reuse it for frying later-if you can stand to live so dangerously. Leftover mashed potatoes are handy here too. Donuts do not keep well, so drop off to the neighbors whatever you won't be eating.
Maple Glazed Buttermilk Donuts, adapted from my friend Kristen:
Estimated Cost: $4.00 for 1 dozen donuts and loads of donut holes
Notes: Follow the directions carefully for best results. Be extra careful not to add too much flour. Sticky dough makes for velvety donuts. This is one case that I use instant mashed potatoes for their smoothness and convenience. Maple extract makes the glaze extra special.
2 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup mashed potatoes (I use 1 cup boiling water and 1/2 cup instant mashed potato flakes or buds)
4 and 1/2 cups flour, DIVIDED
2 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
pinch of nutmeg (two quick shakes)

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat eggs until frothy. Add sugar and beat well. Add buttermilk butter, vanilla. Stir in mashed potaotes. Sprinkle exactly 3 and 1/2 cups flour, plus powder, soda, salt and nutmeg over the dough. Stir until just blended. The dough will be extremely sticky. Line a dinner plate with waxed paper. Sprinkle 1/2 cup flour on top of abouwaxed paper. Gather sticky dough up and press onto waxed paper; sprinkle the top with remaining 1/2 cup flour. If you need to patt atop a little more flour to be able to work with the dough, go ahead and sprinkle/pat it on top but DO NOT mix it in. ( You can refrigerate dough for a couple of hours at this point if you want, but not for too long or the dough will turn black from the potatoes.) Let the dough rest on the plate for five minutes. Meanwile, heat large heavy pot with 1 inch of oil until oil is about 375 degrees. Turn donuts out onto flat floured surface. Pat the dough into a square only slightly larger than the plate. The dough should be about 1/2 inch thick. (Do not knead in the flour that have you sprinkled on the donuts. It will cook away on the outside, promise.) Cut donuts with donut cutter, or use the top of a prescription pill bottle for donut holes. Holes are the best in my opinion. Fry donuts until pale golden brown, turning once. Drain on paper towels. Cool for five minutes before glazing.
Maple Glaze
Notes: This makes enough for half a batch of donuts, in case you want to make some powdered sugar donuts or plain sugar.
Combine 2 cups powdered sugar, 2 teaspoons maple extract and about 4 tablespoons cream (or milk) until smooth.
Coming Tomorrow:
More Edible Evil
Halloween Chocolate Cupcakes