I knew I wanted to make doughnuts while I was home for Thanksgiving and had access to my parent’s kitchen and, maybe more importantly, my Mom’s stand mixer. I also needed to be sure I had enough people around to actually eat the doughnuts, and my family kindly obliged. I much prefer the lighter taste and texture of these to fried doughnuts, and they could almost be healthy…. ? Or not.
Baked Doughnuts
Original recipe here at 101Cookbooks
Don’t over bake these, if anything, under bake them a bit – they continue baking outside the oven for a few minutes. You want an interior that is moist and not dry. Also, be sure to cut big enough holes in the center of your doughnuts, too small and they will bake shut. Remember they rise when they’re baking.
Yields about 1 1/2-2 dozen medium donuts, and the equivalent number of doughnut holes
Place 1/3 cup of the warm milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir in the yeast and set aside for five minutes or so. Be sure your milk isn’t too hot or it will kill the yeast. Stir the butter and sugar in to the remaining cup of warm milk and add it to the yeast mixture. With a fork, stir in the eggs, flour, nutmeg, and salt – just until the flour is incorporated. With the dough hook attachment of a mixer beat the dough for a few minutes at medium speed.
Transfer the dough to a buttered or oiled bowl, cover, and put in a warm place. Let rise for an hour or so until the dough has roughly doubled in size.
Punch down the dough and roll it out until ½ inch thick on a floured countertop.
Use a 2-3 inch cookie cutter to stamp out circles. Transfer the circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet and stamp out smaller inner circles using a smaller cutter. If you cut the inner holes any earlier, they become distorted when you attempt to move them. Cover with a clean cloth and let rise for another 45 minutes.
Bake in a 375 degree oven until the bottoms are just golden, 8-10 minutes – start checking around 8. While the doughnuts are baking, place the butter in a medium bowl. Place the sugar and cinnamon in a separate bowl.
Remove the doughnuts from the oven and let cool for a minute. Dip each one in the melted butter and quickly toss in the sugar bowl. These are meant to be eaten immediately, while still warm (they do not hold up well.) Eating them quickly was not a problem…
These cookies are really, really addictive. Not entirely unlike the chocolate wafers I previously posted about, they have a great dark chocolatey taste and crumbly texture. Sorry about the lack of photos, I was nearly done making the dough when I remembered to take a photo with my phone – my pint-sized nieces and nephews were in town for Thanksgiving and things were hectic. When the cookies were done they were promptly eaten, so I never managed to get a picture of the finished product, as I was too busy eating it. Check out the amazing smittenkitchen.com (where I discovered this fantastic recipe) for much better photos.
World Peace Cookies
Recipe found here at smittenkitchen.com. Originally from Paris Sweets, Dorie Greenspan
Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment or a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until soft and cremy. Add both sugars, the salt and vanilla extract and beat for 2 minutes more.
Turn off the mixer. Pour in the flour, put a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself from flying flour (I messed up on this and ended up covered in it), pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time. If there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple more times. Continuing at low speed, mix for 30-60 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough – work the dough as little as possible, it will look crumbly (which is good). Add chocolate pieces and mix only to incorporate.
Take half the dough and shape it into logs that are 1 ½ inches in diameter. Do the same with the other half. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325. Line two baking sheets with parchment or baking mats (baking mats are on my Christmas list!)
Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 12 minutes – they won’t look done, nor will they be firm, but that’s the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are just warm, then serve. Cookies are also more than edible at room temp. Store uneaten cookies in airtight containers.
These biscotti are really easy to make, which is a problem. For a recipe this simple, the biscotti are remarkably refined and flavorful. The fact that they’re easy to make means I make them all the time, which is great if you have people to give cookies to but bad when you live alone and can’t find any takers on short notice. It’s impossible to eat just one. I went through about 10 today so far. Thank goodness I was able to pass half the batch on to some enthusiastic friends, so crisis averted. This time..
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, ¾ of the sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir in pistachios and chocolate.
5. Bake until risen and firm, 15 to 20 minutes. Let logs cool completely on sheet, about 30 minutes.
6. Reduce oven to 300 degrees. Using a serrated knife, cut logs crosswise into ½-inch-thick slices. Arrange slices in a single layer on baking sheets. Bake until biscotti are mostly dry, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Chocolate Wafers, adapted from Gourmet Magazine (February 1950)
Yields about six dozen
Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Add the sifted dry ingredients gradually, mixing well after each addition to make a light dough (as I added more and more of the dry ingredients, the dough got increasingly fudge-like and not particularly “light.” Not a problem as it turns out, as it still yielded an awesome, lightly crispy cookie).
The Gourmet recipe calls for rolling out the dough on a floured surface and cutting with a 2 ½ inch diameter cookie cutter. I found a much easier solution, thanks to a commenter on Gourmet’s site; roll the dough into two small logs, and chill for at least an hour until firm enough to slice into 1/8 inch thick discs.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place rounds on an ungreased baking sheet, and bake for 8 minutes. Watch verrrryy carefully, as the cookies burn quickly. One cookie sheet I baked was a bit burnt, and still tasted excellent, but the ones I didn’t allow to bake as long ended up tasting better as they hardened naturally in Tupperware containers in the kitchen at room temp. Though they weren’t there long…
I attempted to take full advantage of my parents’ kitchen whilst in Philadelphia (it is probably 8x the size of mine,) and opted to try my hand at bread. My sister suggested a Honey Oatmeal Bread from the (hilarious) cookbook Breaking Bread with Father Dominic. Excellent suggestion, Katie.
Yields 2 loaves
2. Sprinkle yeast over ¼ cup warm water in a small bowl, stir to mix. Let stand 5 minutes to dissolve.
3. Feel the oats at the bottom of the bowl to be sure they’re lukewarm. Add honey, butter, salt and yeast mixture. For an extra-rich dough, add egg (I did, and the dough was excellent.) Mix well. Work in enough of the flour so the dough can be handled, but the dough should remain pretty sticky because of the honey.
4. Turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead for 1 to 2 minutes. Cover and let rest 10 minutes. Knead until dough is elastic but still rather sticky, adding flour as needed; don’t add too much flour at a time.
5. Place dough in a greased bowl and turn to coat. Cover and let rise in a warm, draft-free place about 1 hour, or until doubled in bulk.
6. Punch down dough and divide into two equal pieces. Knead out any air bubbles, but don’t use flour on the kneading surface; you want the dough to remain sticky.
7. Form each piece into a loaf. Roll each loaf in additional oats until completely covered. Place loaves on lightly greased baking sheets. Cover and let rise about 30 minutes, or until doubled.
8. While dough is rising, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake loaves about 45 minutes, or until they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Remove from baking sheets and let cool on wire racks.
