I’m forever looking online for new recipes to try, and it seems like there aren’t a lot of foods I haven’t given a go over the years of writing this column.
I keep a spreadsheet of the recipes that have appeared in this space to keep track of what I’ve done and also when they came out, since I sometimes receive e-mails asking me for recipes that appeared pretty far back.
I started my 2018 spreadsheet and decided to do some counting. This column is my 288th recipe. I don’t even want to consider how many tablespoons of butter that probably represents.
That being said, I’m constantly amazed by the types of foods I haven’t tried making yet, and this week is another one to mark in the books as a new experience: donuts.
Years ago, I wrote about making fried donuts from biscuits—a childhood favorite—but until this week, I haven’t tried baking them.
I received a donut pan for Christmas, so I decided on New Year’s Eve that it was time to try out a baked donut recipe.
I started very simply with just a sugar donut recipe, and they were a great treat to accompany our game night with friends.
The recipe I used came from the blog “Brooklyn Farm Girl.” You can read it at http://brooklynfarmgirl.com/2017/02/06/homemade-baked-sugar-donuts/. I doubled the vanilla in my version.
If you don’t own a donut pan, by the way, you can make these as muffins or create your own donut pan out of a muffin tin with aluminum foil. I found a good tutorial to do that at http://tiphero.com/diy-doughnut-pan-and-recipe/.
Baked Sugar Donuts
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cup oil I used canola
- 1/2 cup buttermilk I used skim milk with a touch of vinegar
- 3/4 cup sugar plus more for coating the donuts
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup flour
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray your donut pan with non-stick spray and set aside.
- With a fork, beat the eggs, oil, buttermilk, sugar, salt, baking powder and vanilla together.
- Mix in the flour.
- Pour the batter into the donut pan, filling each well about 3/4 of the way up.
- Bake for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the donuts comes out clean.
- Remove and let cool for a few minutes before removing the donuts from the pan.
- Put a scoop of sugar into a Ziploc bag or a bowl and coat your warm donuts in sugar on all sides one at a time.
- Store in an airtight container.
I actually halved this recipe, since my donut pan only makes six donuts at a time, and there were only four of us playing games, and it was super easy to do.
These aren’t fancy by any means, but I really liked how simple the flavors were. You could also coat these in a cinnamon-sugar mixture if you wanted to add a little more zip to them.
It was also such a quick recipe that I already had my pan filled with batter before my oven was finished preheating.
And now I can cross baked donuts off the list of foods I haven’t tried making yet. Who knows what culinary roads 2018 will lead me down? I’m excited to see (and so are my taste buds). I’m glad you’ll be joining me for the journey.
This piece first appeared in print on Jan. 4, 2018.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.