Today we celebrate "Buy a Doughnut Day," but as the folks at CDKitchen suggest, why not modify this day to be "Make a Doughnut [/Donut] Day"? In honour of the donut, I finally got around to making Chinese-style donuts which fed perfectly as a dessert to a dinner I had last night with four Denison students who live in my residence hall. Just as these recipes suggest (links 1, 2, and 3), the easiest way to make homemade donuts is to shape them out of the pre-made buttermilk biscuit canisters you can find in the grocery store. But with successive failed attempts at working with yeast, I was determined to finally master its use in creating homemade, from-scratch, donuts fit for celebrating. By combining these recipes (here and here) along with the brilliant recipe found at the Pioneer Woman's blogsite, I got around to making light donuts that were warm with doughy goodness. I have made donuts before using the pre-made stuff, but with a little patience, the from-scratch variety is much more meaningful. Along with my Chinese-style donuts with spiced chocolate sauce and whipped cream, the rest of the dinner menu included a Vienna pizza bread on my part, and by Joy (one of the students), soy sauce chicken and mushrooms, spicy sliced pork and cabbage, and "real" rice(!).
