October 2010 Daring Baker's Challenge-Doughnuts

Did you know that secretly I would love to be a revered chef? Though I sometimes have a love/hate relationship with my kitchen I am beginning to sway more towards the "love" side and am thoroughly enjoying my rediscovery of cooking. I joined a "club" per se known as The Daring Kitchen. This online site unites bakers and cooks throughout the world giving them a spot of common ground each month by challenging them to try something new. October was my first month as a new participant and I chose to stick with the baking side of preparation. While I like cooking just as well I become a tad more excited when anything with dough or batter is involved.

I have made doughnuts once before. It was two years ago and I was living in a small Virginia town with my family. It was fall, leaves were changing, the air was feeling cooler and I decided I wanted to make doughnuts. Well, they were a flop. They were quite bland and tasted greasy. This month's challenge had me hoping that I could master (or at least improve upon) the art of doughnut creation and consumption.

While we were allowed to use any recipe we could find one was provided to us but I felt that simplicity was key and stuck with this Alton Brown recipe from Food Network. A few things that I changed or discovered along the way:

-I used butter instead of shortening
-The dough was extremely sticky and almost pourable. After it raised (and it took almost 1.5 hours before I saw any real raising going on) it was a bit more like bread dough and less like cake batter.
-Do not fry for one minute each side. I burned most of mine. :( I would say go for 20 seconds each side.

And that's it! If I were to make them one more time I would probably add a tiny bit more of flour and fry them more quickly.

My taste tester had no qualms with the treats being a tad overcooked.

Maybe next time I will also do a complete glaze instead of just the tops.

I know, not the fanciest of pictures but it was late at night and I wasn't up for styling my food. :)

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.