Recipe: Improvisational Doughnuts

I’m not a great cook. I would say that I am broadly competent. I do however consider myself to be a reasonably good solver of problems. So in that spirit I’m going to write this whilst I am cooking this recipe. ⊕ Or at least whilst I try and invent a suitable recipe This may turn out to be a complete disaster. But on the principle that you should report all your trials (and not just the succesful ones) I’m going to write as I cook.

Ingredients for step one
1 Child who wants a doughnut
1 lack of any doughnuts

I’m never one to back down from a challenge ⊕ Unless I’m tired. Or busy. Or I don’t want to. Okay, fine I’m often one to back down from a challenge, but let’s say, for rhetorical purposes that I’m not, in fact, one to back down from a challenge so I’m not going to simply declare defeat and try and feed the child some healthy fruit. No. I’m going to try and make there be doughnuts!

Firstly I do not have much oil. So frying is out of the question. Also I recently had to visit my local hospital to have some crispy bits trimmed off my arm after an incident with a recalcitrant cheesebuger and a pan of hot oil so I am somewhat wary of hot oil right now.

So, baking.
Do we have any yeast? No.
Well, not really, there’s a sourdough fermenting in a jar.
Also there is bread flour. That’s not going to make for a particularly timely or tasty doughnut.
But…. Ah-ha. There is self raising flour.

So. Self raising flour. Let’s say 150g.⊕ These numbers are all a little approximate, because I added a bit more flour to get the consistency right
We want them fluffy so. a bit of baking powder. 1tsp.
Also we want them fluffy and fast. Let’s toss in the juice of this lemon that I was using for tequila sunrises.
The acid of the lemon juice should reqact with the baking powder and give us bubbles.
Sugar. Sure. Throw in some sugar. We only have brown sugar, so that’s what’s going in. Say… 80g
Then top of the rest with your usual cake ingredients.
Milk. 100ml?
A Egg.
Some oil. I am nearly out.. so 46 ml. Because that’s what I have.

Throw it all in a bowl together.
Mixy mixy. ⊕ Or get a child to mix it, which is what I did.

The next problem. I do not have a doughnut pan. Why would I even have a doughnut pan. I’ve got a cupcake pan. Hmmm. Ok. I’ve got a stack of shillings and some tin foil. So, wrap the shillings in tinfoil. ⊕ The shillings were left over from a treasure hunt that we had at our wedding. I also used a few 2ps and 10ps, because I didnt have enough shillings Butter up the shillings. Pour in the mix, about halfway up. Bake in a hot oven. (I went with 220°) and from a few test runs is seems that 6 minutes does the job. Blammo.
Buttered Shilling Doughnuts.

I will at some point finish my plans for a recipe system started here and if we all survive eating these, will add it in.

Upon presentation of my masterpiece I was duly informed that these were not proper doughnuts. Proper doughnuts have icing and sprinkles. I can report that my attempt to turn a fondant dinosaur into icing was at best a qualified success. ⊕ Which is to say, not a success at all