Hi eaters!

So remember last night how I made an excuse as to why I didn’t post my donut recipe on Tuesday. Ya know, how I had so much to say and couldn’t do it justice unless I had time to properly flush out my ideas and write?

Well, I’m sitting down to write this post at 10:32pm.

Yup. This is my life.

Anywhoo, donuts.

The idea to make donuts came about when Leon and I were talking about the holidays coming up. We’ve talked about some of our holiday memories and traditions in the past, and one of Leon’s fondest memories (as it seems to me) is of his mother making donuts on Christmas morning.

According to him, his mother makes these really amazing, almost salty donuts and then they each get a bowl of maple syrup to dip them in. When the donuts are gone everyone then drinks their bowl of syrup.

(FYI, this story is also how Leon convinced me that it was completely normal and almost required that I take a shot of syrup when I went up to Vermont last summer.)

Every time he tells me about this tradition he gets such a little boy sparkle in his eyes that I couldn’t help but get intrigued by these donuts.

And of course, every time he talks about his mother’s Christmas donuts I can’t help but think of my own mother taking Brother and I to Dunkin’ Donuts some mornings before school. While him and I were ordering the craziest, most heavily iced donuts we could find, Mother always, without fail, ordered an Old Fashioned, which is just a plain cake donut.

It may seem weird that I think of Mother driving me to school while Leon is thinking of his family’s Christmas traditions, but Mother driving Brother and I to school was kind of a big deal. Everyday from preschool until we were in high school (and even some then, too), she drove us to school. We were almost never on time and our shirts certainly were never tucked in, but that didn’t matter to Mother. She always drove the speed limit and always listened to NPR.

I may not get a little boy sparkle in my eyes thinking about these morning commutes, but they’re still pretty special.

So with simple, glaze-less donuts bringing up such fond memories for Leon and I, it seemed like it was high time that I tried my hand at them.

Classic.

Old Fashioned Buttermilk Donuts

Adapted from Something Swanky

I don’t know if either of the donuts in question actually use buttermilk (and I’m certainly not comparing these to Leon’s mother’s donuts), but I wanted to* so I did.

2 ½-3 c AP flour, plus more for dusting

1/3 c sugar

1 t baking soda

½ t baking powder

~1 t nutmeg

½ t salt

1 c buttermilk

1 egg

2 T coconut oil/butter

oil for frying

Put everything except the frying oil in a bowl and mix until combined. Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour.

Roll the dough out on a well-floured surface until it is ~1/4” thick, or just a tad thicker. Using whatever two sizes of circles cutters you have on hand (I used the top of a Mason jar and a fondant cutter I happened to have), cut out donuts and place on a floured sheet of wax paper.

You can save the centers to fry as donut holes or you can throw them back into the dough and roll them out for more donuts. Your call.

Once all the donuts have been cut, heat ~4” of oil in a pot (or an electric wok!) to roughly 350-375F. Gently drop the donuts in one at a time, in batches of two or three. Cook for ~2 per side and then transfer to a paper towel to drain.

Keep frying until all dozen or so donuts have been fried to fragrant, brown perfect.

From here you can dip them in cinnamon sugar, add a chocolate ganache, coat them in vanilla glaze, or dip them as you see fit. Or, you can be a bit of a purist, and leave them as they are.

Obviously, I chose the simplest route and was rewarded with a big plate full of brown, crispy, warm, slightly misshapen, not overly sweet or sticky donuts.

And while these don’t have nearly the same emotional attachment as Leon’s mother’s donuts or my mother’s favorite donut, they’re still delicious. And they’re still homemade.

And you can bet every single dollar that you have that one day these donuts will actually mean something to someone. Hopefully by then I’ll be better at keeping them round.

What do you think, eaters:

What’s a food that has a strong, albeit slightly silly or obscure emotional attachment for you?

What’s your favorite kind of donut?

G’night eaters!

Not real buttermilk.

*I didn’t use real buttermilk. It wasn’t until the day after I made them that I read this NYTimes article about how most conventional buttermilk is fake. And lo and behold, when I checked my carton I realized that it, too, was just milk with cultures added in.