Doughy, not ideal.

I'm back, with a plate of donuts. I wish you could eat them. Yes, I realize that they don't look like donuts, quite, but they're tasty! A couple nights ago, during story time, Jonah asked what the word "ideal" means. My years of liberal arts schooling came to mind, but I didn't feel like getting into philosophy, exactly, with my 5 year old at 8 p.m. We answered him with, "The best that it can be." Well, these are not ideal donuts, as far as appearances go. And some were still doughy in the middle (which was actually kind of yummy), so I can't even claim that the inside was ideal. But I've now gotten "doughnut-making" out of my system, so that's ideal.

On this cloudy, dreary Monday, on which three of the four of us at home right now have the sniffles, and the other is a 5 year-old boy who would probably rather be at school, I needed a project. Between the prep, the frying, the consuming (which would be ongoing, except that I’m experimenting with freezing these) and the cleaning, donut-making has consumed a fair chunk of my day. Clean-up shouldn’t have been such a pain, but I guess that sometimes even when you follow directions, things can still turn out a little messy. (Is that a life-lesson in tasty, doughy disguise? I will let you judge for yourself.)

The recipe is from King Arthur’s “Whole Grain Baking,” so I’m allowed to say that these donuts are, if not quite healthy, less bad than they could be. The mixture of oat flour (i.e., finely ground oats), whole wheat flour and bread flour is not too sweet; the cinnamon sugar mixture added the perfect complement to the crunchy exterior. I’m not such a fan of the powdered sugar, which was a concession to my eldest son -- I think I didn’t wait long enough to roll the donuts in the sugar, so the powder is still moist and sticky. Though, now that I write that, I realize that I can try to pass that off as the frosting that the boys have been wanting, just like Dunkin’ Donuts fried dough. I wonder if they’ll be convinced...