Dough Knots or Do Nuts?

I think my family had gone a bit loopy this weekend from too much rain. My weekend escapade was to be cake donuts. Somehow this launched both my spouse and our 12 year old into a verbal competition for exaggerated pronunciations of the word "donut."

Amidst the giggles and drawn out syllables, I somehow managed to conquer my task. At least, to some extent.

The challenge was sour cream donuts. As I worked my way through the recipe, I slightly regretted actually purchasing sour cream. Usually, I choose plain yogurt as a healthier option. Also, it smells a lot better. Luckily, the recipe called for nutmeg which covered the sour fragrance easily. Especially since I added cinnamon as well.

I never do just nutmeg. I always pair it with cinnamon, cloves, or both depending upon the recipe. The pairing seems to enhance the nutmeg and I have yet to encounter a recipe that is thrown off by an extra teaspoon of spice.

Again, this was a recipe that skipped the mixer in exchange for the whisk. I took a moment to consider but given the ingredients, I felt secure in my ability to conquer yet another recipe with my mighty whisk.

The original recipe reportedly yielded 6 donuts. I know my family and this would not be an acceptable quantity. Double up it was to be! This worked well since sour cream comes in an 8 ounce tub and the recipe called for half a cup. Perfect!

As I put my ingredients together and whisked away, I was happy to find that this batter actually was easy to whisk. Good deal.

My donut pans were hand-me-downs from my mother. I vaguely remember when she got them about a decade ago. They were used once and then promptly put away. At the time, the only recipe my mother had was a bake then fry. Far too much work and fat. Due to prolonged storage, the pans were in excellent shape if a bit dusty.

After a quick wash and dry, I greased up each slot as best I could.

Filling the donut slots was made far easier with the use of one of my featherweight pastry bags. Without the use of a pastry tip, the soft batter was more then happy to run straight through the pastry bag. Simple fold over and clip with a clothespin allowed me to fill my bag completely, avoiding the mess.

After a couple of fills, I found the method and pace to fill each donut slot efficiently. Into the oven the pans went.

While waiting through bake time, another round of the debate for Dough Knots versus Do Nuts began and swiftly ended as I shooed my boys out the door. Off to the park with you; go play with your RC boat. I was grateful for the silence as I contemplated my baking rings of cake.

The recipe had instructed to grease the pans. Only grease. I hate seeing this in cake related recipes as grease alone, in my experience, is never enough. I always ignore this line of a recipe and I will completely prepare my bakeware: grease and flour. However, I have never done a sour cream cake recipe nor have I baked something as thin and petite as these donuts appeared to be. I figured this should be a safe recipe to follow the guideline of grease only.

When I pulled the donuts from the oven, they looked lovely and smelled fantastically inviting.

And they outright refused to leave their cozy slots in the pans. Fantastic. Another lesson in following your baking instinct.

After much discussion between me and the donuts, each was removed and settled onto the cooling rack. However, the process had taken enough time that the donuts were no longer warm enough for a quick toss in granulated sugar, powdered sugar, and brown sugar (not all together!). A sample donut or two proved the cinnamon a good addition and none of the three sugar toppings was missed.

 

Tips: always grease and flour your pans. This allows for the greatest assurance that cake products will fall from their pans. Don't worry, not enough flour will stick to interfere with the recipe.

The pronunciation war finally subsided with the apparent winner being Do Nuts. Congrats to our 12 year old.