d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-DONUTS! A story of failure, and a new hope.

Yes, donuts. The silly season is past (or is it? Does New Years day count? When is the official end??) and the White Christmas and Peanut Brittle are gone. The former we ate some of and the rest got chucked after Mum and Dad left and the rice puffs went a little soggy (after storing well for a week in the fridge). The latter we ate all of. Oops.

My story begins yesterday as I was doing the shopping. As always at my local shopping centre I walk past the Donut King. As usual, I stop to get a latte there. The donuts smell nice. That cinnamon-y donut-y smell. When I ask for my coffee with no sugar, the girl who is serving misunderstands and asks if I want donuts without sugar. Well yes, I would, but I know she just means the cinnamon sugar that is dusted on, I doubt they will make me up some sugar free batter. But an idea is spawned then and there, as I sipped my latte: sugar free donuts. I have to give it a go.

I've never made donuts, and truthfully I don't think I have ever deep fried anything. I don't own a deep fryer but I do own a sturdy saucepan, a candy/deep frying thermometer and a willing heart. So I arrived home with a car full of shopping and a head full of donut dreams. I needed to research a) donut recipes (preferably easy) and b) the best oils/fats for deep frying. The recipe was simple, there are a plethora of simple recipes for what are claimed to be donuts; the oil slightly less so because of the ongoing controversy about saturated vs unsaturated fats. I don't fear a saturate or two so I chose lard for my deep frying needs, mainly because it has a high smoke point, it is solid at room temperature (a must for donuts, otherwise they seep oil and get soggy) and a website by a US Donut Bakery where they stated that they used only the finest quality lard because of the importance of the 'mouth feel' of the donut. Well mouth feel is important to me as to any donut consumer, so lard it would be. Also, I knew I could buy it at the supermarket. I ignored internet posts suggesting that supermarket lard is inferior and I should get high quality lard from a farmers market. Some people have no idea about spontenaity.

Once the lard was in hand (actually, in fridge), I started the dough. The recipe is here. I didn't modify it other than to halve the recipe (not an easy proposition when the full recipe calls for one egg) and to use 1 tablespoon of dextrose instead of 75g sugar. I felt that I didn't want my donuts to be all that sweet, but I planned to cover them in a mixture of dextrose and cinnamon to get that true donut taste. Oh foolish mortal.

As soon as I started making the dough, I had my doubts. As I said, I have not made donuts before, but I have made scones before. This is pretty darn similar to a scone recipe, I thought to myself, except for the half an egg. Would this really make a delicious, fluffy treat once treated with lard?

Look, I won't tease you any longer. The answer is no.

I pretty much made deep fried scones. Even covered in dextrose and cinnamon, they were...not nice. Then there was the smell of the now-bubbling lard. I had read that lard is beef fat (plus some gross things about which part of the cow it was from, especially from those who visit farmers markets for their lard) so I was expecting some smell. The lard I used was clearly, clearly pig fat. I mean clearly. My nose does not lie. I love crackling as much as the next person (who loves crackling), but there is a point a gal reaches when standing over a bubbling pot of pig fat watching a deep fried scone float to the surface when it just becomes a bit overpowering. And I had to keep monitoring the temperature of the oil, taking it on and off the heat (carefully so as not to start a house fire/ set off smoke alarms and wake my son). And despite my best efforts, the dough was not magically turning to donut.

This was not going to happen, clearly. I turned off the stove and walked away (after carefully removing the pot from the hot element). Both the cooked and uncooked 'sconuts' went in the bin. May they rest in peace.

But I'm not beaten yet. There are other donut recipes to try, ones that actually might produce a donut-type product, with or without sugar. There are deep fryers to purchase or (more likely) borrow. There are other oils to fry foods in. With you as my witness, dear reader, someday I will eat a donut again, and it will be sugar free. And it will not smell like pig fat or taste like a crispy scone. But excuse me if it is not soon, I think deep frying and I need some time apart.

In the meanwhile, there are always Donut Muffins. My wonderful friend Betsi (a fellow blogspot-ee) posted a recipe ages ago for these, which she called Doughnut Muffins. I'm not going to quibble with her spelling as I'm about to steal her recipe (although I note that DK chooses my spelling...look, I'll be honest, I was faced with a decision and went with donut as easier to type, ok?).

Following the digital trail backwards across blogs, the original recipe is here. I've made two modifications to the recipe. One is substituting butter for the oil. I hate cooking cakes or muffins with oil, I much prefer to cook with butter, and a quick internet search told me this was possible with baked products such as muffins (but not with other products such as choux pastry- which I could care less about). And the other was obviously using dextrose instead of sugar. I used 1/2 cup dextrose instead of 3/4 cup sugar. This was partly to account for the fact that both dextrose and butter exude water when heated, unlike oil and sugar, so I didn't want there to be too much dextrose in there. To be honest, I'm not sure if my success was helped by this decision or if it wouldn't have made a lick of difference.

But here it is. It's not a donut, but it's a deliciously donut-y muffin.

Delicious Dextrose Donut Muffins

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cup flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
75g butter (1/3 cup)- melted
1/2 cup dextrose
1 egg
3/4 cup milk

Delicious coating:

1/2 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup dextrose combined with 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180 C and grease a muffin tin. Combine dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon) in one bowl and wet ingredients (melted butter, sugar, egg and milk) in a larger one. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir to combine.

A little side note here. Muffins can go from deliciously moist and fluffy to deadweight in the blink of an eye. The trick, apparently is minimal stirring, just until the flour has been moistened. Ignore the fact that it is still lumpy. Really, ignore it. And lo, you shall make great muffins. You heard it here, folks. (And I heard it here).

Spoon the batter into the muffin tin. Another tip: apparently you are not supposed to fill them all the way up; aim for about 2/3 full in order to let them blossom into lovely domed muffins.  I sound like I know what I am doing, don't I? But really I got this from here again. Cook the muffins for 15-20 minutes.

Once done (check with a skewer), tip them out while still hot. Dip each one in melted butter, then in the combined dextrose and cinnamon mixture. Allow to cool on a wire rack.


Prepare for deliciousness :)

I bought out the good china for this little wonder.

I decided to do the topping on only what I was prepared to eat immediately, and put the rest of the batch in the freezer. I think (hope) I can simply reheat one at a time when the mood strikes and dip in melted butter and dextrose/cinnamon and enjoy.

Happy 2012 everyone. For those sugar free- may it be a sweet year anyway!