Glazed Doughnuts - March 21, 2010

Homemade Glazed Doughnuts

Nick received a GranPappy deep fryer as a belated birthday gift from my parents this weekend and we put it immediately to work. There was a time not so long ago, Dinner Clubbers, when I would have recoiled at owning and using a deep fryer. Luckily I have moved past this aversion and I am quite excited to be able to concoct our own doughnuts, fry fish for tacos, and other things that I'm sure we'll discover on our deep fryer journey.



Yes, it's true!

Just like everything I make at home, I like having control of what goes in the preparation as well as in my mouth. It seems counter-intuitive that owning a deep fryer will make us healthier, and while that statement is indeed a stretch, I stand by the idea that homemade doughnuts are better for us than store-bought, if for no other reason than we know exactly what's in them.




For the GranPappy's maiden voyage, we opted for a basic raised, glazed doughnut recipe. While I prefer the cake variety of doughnuts, Nick is a sucker for the raised version, and since it was his birthday gift, we did his choice first. These turned out really well for our first attempt. I was put off a bit at first taste, as the yeast seemed to lend too much flavor (normally I love that yeasty flavor, but not so much in doughnuts, turns out). After they cooled a bit, however, the yeast settled down and they tasted better to me.



Just a word about the recipe. It claims to make 18 three inch doughnuts, so I cut it in half, thinking nine would be more than enough. Half the recipe actually turned out to make 15 doughnuts, plus lots and lots of doughnut holes. Next time I will cut it by half again so we have a more modest amount of doughnuts to consume. Lucky for us we had some help getting through this batch.