Doughnuts!

Doughnuts are a traditional New Years Day delight.  Of course, that does not stop us from having doughnuts any other time of the year, however we did have our New Years Day doughnuts and this time we tried out our new jelly tip for making jelly doughnuts.  Warm little puffs of yeasted heaven with a crunchy granulated sugar-coating and sweet raspberry jelly oozing out the side.  Yum!  I use Alton Brown’s recipe which has a touch of freshly grated nutmeg in the dough and makes perfect doughnuts every time.  A deep fryer is handy but a heavy pot will do.  It’s a wet dough and I try not to work it too much.  Don’t want chewy doughnuts.  I also learned after the first few rounds to cut the recipe in half.  It makes a lot of doughnuts for a family of three and we had to call our neighbors(a family of five) up the road and alert them that warm doughnuts were on the way.  They didn’t seem to mind.  Even with half the recipe, we have a tree of friends we text “Donuts!” to.  One of those friends dropped her shopping from twenty minutes away, raced over, scarfed down a faceful and drove back to the store.  It would be terribly easy to eat these doughnuts every weekend so I am thankful that they are a bit of an ordeal and require some time to rise.  It also allows our homemade doughnuts to be a special occasion that always brings my nine-year old son to my side in the kitchen.  That alone is worth all the effort. 

Here’s the path to Alton Brown’s recipe:http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/yeast-doughnuts-recipe/index.html

Enjoy!