If you’re like me, then this whole stay at home pandemic is prompting
forcing you to get awfully creative when it comes to thinking of engaging activities
that both get you up and moving and also reduce the increasingly aggressive amount
of time you spend in front of a screen.
Indeed, it seems everyone is hungry to pursue stimulating projects, create something new, and explore activities that at least attempt to fill the growing hole social distancing has created. Should I learn a new language? Experiment with breaking bread[1]? Become a plant parent[2]? The opportunities are practically endless: You just have to decide where you’d like to begin!
Drawing inspiration from this recent baking frenzy, I developed a craving to cook up something new, unexpected, and atypical of that which I normally make. As someone who could take or leave pancakes and aggressively dislikes eggs and bacon, I have a notorious love-hate-hate relationship with breakfast food.[3] Because there is no better time than the present to expand my culinary horizons, I thought I would begin by baking something that would widen my breakfast palate.
I decided to make donuts.
Now, if I’m being honest, I don’t really like donuts either[4]. There’s just something about their rich, buttery texture and greasy aftertaste that doesn’t sit well with me. Plus, they are literally missing approximately one-eighth of their critical mass: We’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t admit this makes donuts a little shifty and worthy of serious critique and speculation. I mean doesn’t it bother you just a little that donuts can masquerade as fully-formed desserts without the benefit of being sold at a discounted rate? All I’m saying is that missing one-eighth should be accounted for, and my donut bill should be prorated. [5]
However, while I don’t love donuts, I fully appreciate that other
people love donuts, and, if I’m being honest[6], I
probably have a bit of a dono-fomo: That
is, a fear of missing out as result of my apparent apathy for donuts. What is it about these holey little desserts
that has everyone else going gaga? Is
there some greater secret donut conspiracy I’m not privy to? Are my life experiences inherently worse
because I don’t indulge in an old-fashioned every now and then or feast on a freshly
frosted long john to celebrate life’s sweet moments?
These are the questions that keep me up at night.
As it has become grossly apparent in several of my previous posts, I am a big fan of all things Joanna Gaines. So, when I came across her recipe for homemade Syrian Donuts, I knew I had to give it a go. And yet, I am also a fan of the lesser known yet equally talented[7] culinary blogger/Food Network host Molly Yeh and felt equally compelled to try her donut recipe[8].
And with that Katie’s “Ce-rise” and Shine At-Home Iron Chef Celebrity Donut Bake Off was born[9].
I began with Joana Gaines’ “Syrian Donut” recipe. As most other things in Gaines’ world, this recipe comes with a story, and she writes:
“When I was twelve years old, my grandfather invited me over to teach me how to bake this family favorite. He was a quiet man, and we rarely had the opportunity to really connect. He and my grandmother had nine kids and there were lots of grandchildren, so it was rare to spend any time alone with either of them. While we mixed the dough and shaped the donuts that day, he told me stories about his life and this history of our family I had never heard before. It was a day I will never forget, and even though he is gone now, this recipe always makes me feel connected to him. I am forever grateful that he typed the recipe out for me that day. These subtly sweet, dense donuts have become my children’s favorite weekend treat. They love to make them with me and hear me recount those stories that my grandfather told me so many years ago. Perhaps this will help them feel their own connection to an amazing man who they never had a chance to meet.”
With this moving backstory, I knew these donuts had to be great. I mean, your grandpa doesn’t just hand down his time-cherished family donut recipe if the desserts aren’t mind-blowingly sinful, right? Who knew donuts could play such an integral role in fostering deep family connection and lasting memories?
I followed Gaines’ instructions and began by combining the dry ingredients, whisking the egg mixture, and melting the butter-milk combo. Then, I added my yeast and let it foam before combining all ingredients and putting my green mixing bowl in the “timeout” corner for two hours so it could sit there and think about what it had (not yet) done[10].
Two hours later, I removed my dishtowel and began working the dough into six-inch “cigars” before sealing the ends together to create that iconic circular donut shape.
Then I baked the donuts for approximately 15 minutes and let them cool before dunking them in a gooey glaze of sugary goodness. It’s worth noting Gaines states the recipe makes about three dozen donuts, but my batch produced well over four dozen miniature delicacies. Yum!
The end product was intriguingly tasty if not slightly dense and mildly spicy. While I followed Gaines’ instruction to let the yeast rise for two hours, upon further reflection I realized I probably should have let the yeast “do its thing” in a slightly warmer, sunnier location. Indeed, by allowing the yeast to more fully activate I would have finished with fluffier, less dense desserts. Instead, I ultimately developed something best described as a cross between a cookie and a dog treat. Regardless, the flavor was rich and surprising in a pleasant, unassuming way, and I thoroughly enjoyed an afternoon getting my hands dirty in the kitchen.
If Joanna Gaines’s donut narrative is soft, sweet, and ethereally nostalgic, the story surrounding Molly Yeh’s “Dukkah Donuts with Blood Orange Glaze” is raw, comedic, and gloriously unfiltered.
“The only-all nighter I ever really pulled was in the name of donuts. It happened in college when after a night of suffering through megaphone poetry in Washington Heights[11] and watching my friends dance the salsa on the Lower East Side, it was decided that we should probably just kill 2 hours at the Yaffa Café (RIP) once the bars closed so that we could get to the Doughnut Plant when it opened. This was around the time when I was anxious that the world was going to end before I could try all of the donuts in Manhattan.
I was so proud of myself for convincing my friends of this plan that I ordered one of each flavor and together, my two friends, some guy from Alaska, and I ate 14 of the doughiest glaziest donuts in the city. Miraculously none of us puked and I made it uptown to orchestra rehearsal on time for the downbeat of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra. Ah, to be resilient after all-nighters again…
My donuts these days are all homemade, as we don’t have any donut shops in town, unless you count a Tim Hortons that mainly caters to the Canadian population that descends upon Grand Forks on the weekends to go to Target[12].
Frying them is typically reserved for Hanukkah, but for the rest of the year I use my trusty baked donut pan. It took me a while to warm up to baked donuts, pegging them as nothing but fraudulent muffins, but they’re pretty darn tasty in that quirky shape of theirs. These have a density level somewhere between a cupcake and a muffin, and they’re coated with the Egyptian nut and seed mix, dukkah, which gains a certain specialness thanks to a heavy dose of coriander and anise. Oh, and I’m such a sucker for alliteration! Aren’t you[13]?”
With this feisty color commentary in mind, I was eager to embark on round two of Katie’s “Ce-rise” and Shine At-Home Iron Chef Celebrity Donut Bake Off.
I diligently followed Yeh’s instructions to separately mix the wet and dry ingredients before combining. Then, taking a strategy from my macaron-making playbook, I opted to utilize a plastic Ziploc as a makeshift piping bag[14]. When Yeh writes this step could “get a little messy” she wasn’t kidding!
While the donuts were in the oven, I whipped up the glaze and added a dash of red food coloring to make my otherwise paper mâché looking frosting pop with color and come to life[15].
Once the donuts sufficiently cooled, I followed Yeh’s instructions to dunk them in the frosting before coating them with a healthy sprinkling of her dukkah spice mix. The end result was delicious, but I personally felt the frosting’s arresting sweetness outdid the soft, caky flavoring of the donut itself. To remedy this, I sparingly sprinkled the last six donuts with glaze in a way that would complement rather than overpower their scrumptiously cakey goodness. In the end, I was pleased with these delightful donuts that required minimal effort and time commitment yet yielded maximum results.
Reflecting back on these baking adventures, I realize I didn’t enjoy the actual donuts as much as I did the donut-making process and, inevitably, the stories attached to those processes. Something about both Gaines’ and Yeh’s “donut narratives” caught my attention, drew me in, and made me want to feel some of that same magic they felt in conjunction with these dazzlingly delicious desserts.
Curiously, the appeal isn’t so much in the donuts themselves as it is in the memories and moments that color their “origin stories”, and this resonated with me on a very tangible, meaningful level. At the end of the day, it’s about the process and the people we bring along with us on the journey. It is this—not the tantalizing smell or sweet sugary goodness—that truly gets us out of bed in the morning and helps us approach each day with earnest zeal and endless possibility. If we keep this in mind, we will never lose sight of the tiny moments that truly matter and make our ability to “ce-rise” and shine all the sweeter.
[1] Has anyone else noticed this is what 75% of people on the Internet have been doing to fill their time? The sourdough craze is real, my friends. Perhaps Oprah said it best: “I love bread” as much as the next person, and apparently I’m in good company.
[2] The answer is most certainly “yes.”
[3] Relax. It is one of my only flaws.
[4] Wait. No eggs? No bacon? No donuts? I’m starting to realize I kind of suck…
[5] Seriously, am I the only one bothered by this? Nope, just me? Cool, friends. Real cool.
[6] Which is my general policy.
[7] And infinitely spunkier.
[8] Which comes from her cookbook, Molly on the Range. Check it out: It is delightful on so many levels!
[9] It has a nice, crisp ring to it, no?
[10]Oh my, this is a horrible play on words. I think the quarantine is beginning to get to me…
[11] Yeh attended Julliard. That’s probably important context to have here.
[12] Yeh lives in a small, remote farm town on the Minnesota-North Dakota border. This is also probably worth mentioning.
[13] Am I a fan of alliteration? You betcha I am, Molly! You betcha!
[14] I’m always a fan of using what you have on hand. Unless that’s wax paper, of course. See: “When Life Gives You Lemons, Make… ‘Electric Lime’ Macarons?”
[15] “Cerise” is the color inspiration for this post, after all. With that in mind, how could I not include an extra dose of red to match this vivid cherry hue? I’ll do anything in the name of a good thematic connection.
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