On Saturday evening, my great friends Nick, Kat, Zach and I tried our hand at making Alice Horton’s Famous Donuts. Will was there too.
The batter whipped together in no time, and I was super careful to follow the instructions to a t. Not privy to the secrets of donut-making, I was careful to avoid any obvious mistakes (such as not sifting the flour).
My best friend g. bakes by throwing all the ingredients in a bowl and mixing well. I was glad she wasn’t there to watch as I obsessively measured and sifted and remeasured and, well, I didn’t sift again.
I was thankful when I learned I had a donut-making expert in my kitchen! Nick Slick was put in charge of the next steps.
Nick maintains--contrary to the recipe--that you need a LOT of flour when you roll and cut out the donuts. Saves you time, he says. I think he's right. We didn't have a donut cutter, but made do with a Tupperware snack cup and the top of a clean beer bottle.
Unfortunately, they left me alone with the baking donuts. The recipe said they would be golden brown when they were done. Here they are probably done, but I left them in because they weren't golden brown yet!!
The resulting donuts were more like snickerdoodles...crunchy. Not doughy. I regretted not thinking previously about how donuts are mini cakes, and they need to be moist like mini cakes.
We pledged that the second batch would turn out better.
They did.
Even the overdone ones were coated enough sugar & cinnamon that they weren't really that bad.
It has to be noted that one major culprit in the crappiness of our donuts was my nefarious oven. My oven has had it out for me since the day I cleaned the temperature knob and accidentally scrubbed off all of the numbers. For some reason, it just won’t forgive me.
My nefarious oven does things like burn the bottoms of cookies. I forget the last thing that it ruined (I didn’t ruin it–my nefarious oven did!), but I got the good advice from my awesome friends on Facebook that I needed an oven thermometer. I have since procured an oven thermometer and had it all set and ready to contribute to this project. It got knocked to the floor of the oven (grrr—you nefarious oven, you!) and refused to lend its helping hand.
When I recounted on Facebook about the way the bottoms were too cooked, my friend Meredith suggested switching the cookie sheet half way through. Now that is a good idea.
I was thinking of trying a banana nut donut, but my friend Josh told me that is sacrilege. It sounds pretty good to me though!
I would try making the holes bigger so that they don’t fill up as the donuts rise. When you do that you have to make the donuts bigger. It’s a tricky business and requires ingenuity. However even with the holes that disappeared making these donuts look like Snickerdoodles, I was able to sample a few and they were great!