It’s the Hole that Makes the Doughnut

“Between an optimist and pessimist, the difference is droll.
The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist the hole!”
— Oscar Wilde

“Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.”
— Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

Baked doughnuts

My new doughnut baking pan

Today I got to play with my new Christmas present from my daughter, a pan for baking doughnuts. I don’t like the splatter and smell of hot grease (nor the extra calories), so I’m attracted to the advantages of baked doughnuts.  One big disadvantage, however, is no round doughnut holes to eat.

I remember rainy summer days of my childhood when my brothers, sisters and I would stop for day-old doughnuts at the bakery in town on our way to a day of fishing — long bamboo poles sticking out of the back windows of the car.  My mother would occasionally make doughnuts, using brown paper bags to soak up the grease.  Each warm doughnut was shaken inside another brown bag with sugar and cinnamon.  Oh, the yeasty, sugary taste and smell of fresh doughnuts!

The baking pan will be good for cake-type doughnuts.  For my first batch, I used a recipe for Brown Butter Baked Doughnuts from Joy the Baker blog.  I didn’t have buttermilk on hand, so I substituted a mix of milk and sour cream.  I love doughnuts, and I can see that these will be too tempting to have around unless I restrict myself to making them when we have company, so that I don’t end up eating them all.

Next time I’m going to try Apple Cinnamon Baked Doughnuts, also from the Joy the Baker blog.

What was your favorite Christmas gift this year?