Pride and Fried
After my unsuccessful trial to make “baked” doughnuts, it has been sitting on my head that I need to make edible doughnut. I have a tendency to keep trying until I succeed, as you can see from my Laduree battle.
Speaking of macarons, I still make them for parties and when bored, and I have to say, I fail once every three times. It looks exactly the same when piped out on the cookie sheet, but for some reason, could be humidity, could be the quality of eggs, or whatever the reason is, it looks like the first trial… I think summer Fridays might have to be spent perfecting this.
Back to the doughnut story… This time, I didn’t mess with baking. As I said, doughnuts should be fried, so my intention from the beginning was to fry and make damn good doughnuts. Yesterday was Pride Day, and I had many parties to go, starting 1pm. I knew I would get drunk, but stupidly I started making the dough anyways. Once I mixed everything, I covered and went to a party nearby.
Since it was a pride party, I wanted to contribute something appropriate for the occasion. So I made rainbow jello (of course heavily vodka infused) cake. Everyone was so fascinated by it, cause it looks like a hard work. All you need for making jello cake is patience. You make each color in separate bowls, then cool it. Jello needs to be refrigerated in order to solidify, so it is not that time sensitive. So I made 5 colors, following the recipe on the box, but instead of cold water, I added vodka.
To make each layer more distinctive, I made a white layer using condensed milk, water, and gelatin. Once everything gets cooled, I poured the first layer, put in freezer for 5 minutes, then poured white layer, put in freezer for 5 minutes, then next color, etc., etc., The key is to make sure each layer is settled before pouring the next layer. When taking out of the freezer, if it juggles like boobs, it is ready for next layer. I screwed up first layer a bit, but overall, it was good looking, fun, and very appropriate for the occasion. No one touched it until I announced that it has a ton of vodka in it. After that, in 3 minutes, it was all gone. No matter how old you get, jello shots are such a party favorite.
After 3 hours of heavy drinking at my friend’s apt, I realized I had dough resting, rising, waiting to be fried. So I went home, tipsy, or maybe drunker than I thought… Once I got home, the dough had nicely risen to almost triple the original size. I rolled it out, then cut out the circles. After this, you are supposed to wait for another 40-60 minutes to double the size, but I had to go to another party, so I waited for about 20 minutes, then fried them. Meanwhile, I made glaze with melted butter, powdered sugar and some water.
Once it was fried to nice golden brown, I dunked them in the glaze, and they look like almost Krispy Kream style.
I didn’t have enough glaze, so I coated munchkins with sugar.
Verdict: It didn’t taste like doughnuts. It was like something we Japanese had in elementary school lunch. Fried bread, coated with sugar. Or it was similar to funnel cake. It was good, but not a doughnut. I guess the bottom line is you need to designate time when baking. Don’t go out in between, or don’t bake in a rush. I asked myself after it was done, “why the hell am I frying doughnut on pride day?!” My devotion to bake? Sheer insanity? Trying to be butch by frying on the gayest day of the year?
Whatever it was, my trial number 2 wasn’t great, either. Also doughnuts should be eaten while they are warm, and none of my friends would eat fried food, so all were left and I brought everything to work. At least people at my work appreciated the effort…
