(Still) Searching for the Secret

If you’ve been following these blog posts, you’ll know that I am a big fan of old-fashioned donuts. Force me to choose just one donut from a wide selection, and I’ll go with a maple old-fashioned. I have always wondered how donut shops make these distinctly shaped donuts; my preferred way of consuming them is to break off the edges in sections, leaving the icing-coated center for last.

Last weekend, I attempted to make my own old-fashioned donuts at home. Let’s call it practice for the day when I finally open up my donut shop. Judging from the results, that day is still quite a ways off.

Don’t get me wrong, my old-fashioned donuts came out tasting pretty good, but I failed miserably in my attempt to give the donuts the signature shape of an old-fashioned. I used a recipe from the Top Pot cookbook, in which sage advice was dispensed about using a lower cooking temperature, as well as a double-flip method—that means flipping the donuts over in the oil twice rather than once, as is standard practice when making other varieties.

I'm calling this one the Gazelle.
It went down fast!

Two flavors were attempted: plain old-fashioned and chocolate old-fashioned. Vanilla icing and maple stripes went onto my plain old-fashioned, while the chocolate was coated with maple icing and pecans. Both came out a bit more dense than I’d hoped, possibly due to the fact that I don’t have a big industrial mixer to make my dough nice and light—that’s item #1 on my shopping list before I open my donut shop. The taste, however was surprisingly good for homemade donuts, especially the chocolate-maple-pecan bomb.

What should I name this one?

I may just need to follow in the footsteps of Meng, the manager of Sunny Donuts in Kearny Mesa. He attended Dunkin’ Donuts University (or maybe it’s Dunkin Donuts College, I’m not sure), where he learned how to make all types of donuts, before forging ahead with his own creations. I wonder if DDU has a football team. Now that’s a team everyone would want to cheer for!