Donuts

I like challenges. They can’t be soooo hard that I categorize them as “near impossible and probably not worth the effort”. They need to be attainable. I also like feeding people, I like being able to give folks ‘special’ gifts, and in general I like to do things that will make others happy. As I’ve mentioned before, most of my baking needs to be sugar-free so that my husband and brother-in-law can enjoy the product. I know that my brother-in-law LOVES donuts. They are one of his favorite treats. My understanding of donuts is that they are fried, not baked. Then last August I saw a recipe for BAKED donuts on the King Arthur Baking blog! I printed it and saved it in my recipes book (yes, I know that’s extremely old-fashioned – printing out recipes and saving them on paper in a notebook). I figured that some day I’d have time and energy to make them.

My brother-in-law’s birthday was last week. I of course waited until the last minute to see if I had all the ingredients to make donuts. I was in great shape except for a donut pan. Well OF COURSE it requires a special baking pan! I ordered from two different sites, hoping ONE of them would deliver before his birthday. The big W came through the day before, the big A delivered on the birthday. I hadn’t realized how HUGE the one pan was from W. To be honest I didn’t read either description much – all I read was “donut pan” and the delivery date. 🙂 The other thing I was lacking was sugar-free toppings. I knew I was going to modify the chocolate fudge cake recipe to have a white icing on some, besides the chocolate icing. I ran to the local store to get some SF toppings. Totally useless grocery store – NOTHING SF in the cookies. Really???? Sigh. So I gathered toppings that had sugar and headed home to bake and ice and top. I think they came out well. My husband did the taste testing and he liked them. I saved out a whole donut (we’d split the first one- half for us to taste just the plain donut and then half to taste the icing) for him and it vanished quickly. 🙂 I made a total of 16 donuts and brought 14 of them to my brother-in-law, who promptly ate one, no pause. Happy birthday!