Baked Doughnuts

I have searched high and low for a doughnut pan for years. I would be able to find one faster than you could say 'fractured prune' if I was in the USA. But I live in Australia-land now, and although dreams do come true here as well, the selection of most things is somewhat less extensive. I wandered into The Essential Ingredient the other day with the intention of buying a cookie dough scoop, and stumbled upon a lone doughnut pan amongst bundt pans, shell-shaped tins, and all kinds of the usual baking paraphernalia. Oh boy, was I excited!

My pal Jessie and I organised a baking day soon thereafter, and the rest is chocolate icing, sugar+cinnamon, and sprinkles.

As it was my first time, I wrote down four or five different recipes and went with the most promising. The only change I made was to omit the nutmeg and double the cinnamon-- I find nutmeg to be overpowering and didn't want it to dominate the doughnut.

Baked Doughnuts (makes 12)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup milk (I used soy)
1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 egg
1/4 cup butter (I used Nuttalex)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C)
2. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon
3. In a saucepan, combine milk, vinegar, egg, and butter over medium-low heat until the butter is melted and it's well-combined
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined
5. Scoop into greased doughnut pan, filling each thingy 2/3
6. Bake for 12 minutes

Allow them to cool for a couple minutes in the pan, then tip them out. It's the best part-- they look so cute when they bounce out and roll around the table. I know doughnuts are best warm, but if you ice them when they're warm, the icing thins and melts all over the place. But if you're doing a glaze, cinnamon sugar, or powdered sugar doughnuts it's fine to dress them and devour them right away.

Chocolate Glaze
1/2 cup chocolate morsels
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons boiling water

1. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler
2. Remove from heat and add the sugar, vanilla, and melted butter
3. Add boiling water

Dip the doughnuts into the glaze to the halfway point and sprinkle some sprinkles before the icing hardens!

For cinnamon and sugar doughnuts, brush them with melted butter and roll in a bowl of sugar mixed with cinnamon to coat.

You can use white sugar or powdered sugar-- both were delish, but I found myself particularly enjoying the powdered sugar doughnuts.

Mini Blueberry Muffins + Icing With a Hint of Orange

There are three brown, brown, brown bananas in the fruit bowl, so I was going to make some banana-nut muffins today. I went for a little joggerson, and headed to the store directly from the track to pick up some NUTS. Wandering the aisles of the supermarket, the banana-nut muffin plan was axed when I stumbled upon a blueberry sale!

Bananas are badass, but blueberries are better.

I combined two muffin recipes to produce the muffins: 1) my Mom's banana-nut muffin recipe and 2) a blueberry muffin recipe from bestrecipes.com.

These aren't the greatest as big muffins-- you gotta go mini. And these muffins are a strange sort of muffin. They're almost like a mix between muffin, cake, and donut.

'Muffin' is starting to look like an alien word! I've used it too many times. I'll lay off the M-word for a while. But only a leetle while-- this is, after all, a post devoted to them.

Mini Blueberry Muffins

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup oil

6 tablespoons milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

3/4 cup blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C)

2. Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in small bowl

3. In a larger mixing bowl, combine sugars, eggs, oil, milk, and vanilla

4. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix

5. Stir in blueberries

6. Divvy up the batter into the mini muffin pans

7. Bake 15 minutes

Icing With a Hint of Orange

3/4 cup icing /confectioner sugar

2 tablespoon orange juice (fresh is better, o' course)

(Now, to be honest, I didn't measure the icing ingredients all that precisely-- just start with the 3/4 cup icing sugar and keep adding the orange juice bit by bit until your icing is the texture you like; some like a thick, gloopy icing, others like a more glaze-like icing.)

1. Combine the sugar and orange juice

2. Mix well

3. Spread (well, drizzle) onto mini muffins!