Donuts - With Yeast, Without Holes

Mmmm, donuts. They're delicious, they're available on every street corner in Massachusetts, and they're actually not tough to make.

This dough is in some ways very similar to other doughs we've made in the past year. In other ways, it's very different. It is a yeast dough, with the main components being water, yeast, and flour. But we've also got a lot of fat, some egg, and the dough is fried, instead of being baked.

Being by putting your yeast in warm water. Then melt your some shortening. It's pretty easy to do this in in the milk you'll be using later. It won't mix with the milk, but it will make it easier to pour into the dough.

Once it's melted, let it cool off a little, so as not to kill the yeast. Pour the milk-shortening into the yeast and water, in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add in 1/2 of the flour, an egg, sugar, salt, and nutmeg. Beat until everything is well combined. Add the rest of the flour and keep on beating. Once it starts to thicken, switch to the dough hook and knead until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. It will be a soft dough.

Cover the dough, and let it double in size.

Turn out the dough on a floured surface, roll it out and cut out the donuts.

Feel free to make center holes. I didn't have a cookie cutter that was small enough.

Fry the donuts, a couple at a time, a minute per side.

Move the donuts to a drying rack to drain off any excess oil, and top with a little powdered sugar.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup milk

1/6 cup vegetable shortening

1 package instant yeast

1 egg, beaten

1/3 cup warm water

1/4 c sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

12 ounces AP flour

Frying oil

Procedure:

1. Let the yeast dissolve in the warm water

2. Melt the shortening in the milk, then let cool.

3. Mix everything but half the flour in a stand mixer, and beat until well mixed.

4. Add the other half of the flour and mix well again.

5. Switch to the dough hook and knead until the dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.

6. Transfer to an oiled bowl, cover, and let double in size.

7. Roll out the dough and cut your donuts out.

8. Fry in 360F oil for 1 minute on each size.

9. Drain of oil and cover with confectioner's sugar, or glaze.

Sweetened Condensed Milk

Sweetened condensed milk is a dangerous thing. Open a can and have a spoon handy, and you have a snack for the rest of the day. It's full of milk flavor, plenty sweet, and just plain tasty. It can also be used for non-snacking purposes, if you're into that sort of thing.

It's pretty simple to make your own sweetened condensed milk, and I used the recipe from Almost Bourdain as my base. My only real change, aside from being a bit loose with the measurements, was to use some of my stash of dried whole milk instead of dried skim milk.

Using the dried whole milk may not have been the best idea, but it's what I had, and that's kind of the point of making sweetened condensed milk; like brown sugar, you're probably not going to do much better than what you get from the store. Well, unless you're trying something special, but more on that in a bit. Sweetened condensed milk is going to store just about as long as powdered milk will, so chances are that, if you're making it, it's because you have one ingredient and not the other.

Now, if you're fancy, you could try some tricks with the sweetened condensed milk. To continue the brown butter kick I've been on since Ideas in Food started posting crazy things to do with brown butter, it occurs to me that the milk solids in the sweetened condensed milk could be browned before combining with the sugar. This is different from Dulce de Leche, I believe, because you wouldn't get any caramelization with the sugar.

In any case, making sweetened condensed milk is awfully simple.

Measure out your butter, water, and sugar:

Melt on your fancy new gas range (or whatever; I understand if you didn't just buy a new home mostly because it has gas):

Take the mixture off the heat. Measure out some milk solids:

Mix in 4 batches:

Until it's all smooth:

Or, in my case, until it was fully combined but a bit grainy. I tried adding some water to smooth it out. It helped some, but not enough. It was not creamy smooth as sweetened condensed milk should be. Probably using the whole milk powder didn't do me any favors here.

Even with the graininess, it was plenty tasty. It had the milky, sweet flavor. But better than from a can? Not really. Handy if you're in the right bind, and maybe more awesome if you brown the milk solids in the butter before adding the sugar and water, but that's an experiment for another day.

It should be mentioned that, the day after I had originally meant to do this post, Jenni Field, the Online Pastry Chef, did this herself. It's as if we have some sort of psychic food link. Spooky!

Graham Crackers (And S'Mores)

To make authentic graham crackers you should use graham flour. The trick there would be to find graham flour. Seriously, it's super hard. Whole wheat pastry flour will make a good substitute. All that being said, this was a great recipe and I just used regular run of the mill all-purpose flour.

Start out with 7 tablespoons of butter, frozen if you have a large food processor, or chilled if you don't.

Mix flour, brown sugar, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. 

If you've got a food processor you could just pulse that, and then throw in the butter, and continue to pulse until you've got a coarse mixture.

If you don't have a gigantic food processor, cut the butter into the mixture using your favorite method (knives, fingers, forks, pastry cutter, but please don't mix and match).

In a separate bowl, mix honey, milk and vanilla extract. It will look a little gross.

Add the mixture to the dough, and pulse or mix until it comes together. Form it into a disk and chill.

You may have to adjust the amounts (given below) to get the right consistency. My dough was a little on the dry side, but worked out in the end. 

Mix up some cinnamon sugar for a topping.

Halve the dough and roll it out to about 1/8" thick, and cut it into rectangles.

If you want to be authentic, you'd cut all the way through for some, and just go partly through others. This, it turns out, is a lot of work, and they don't always hold together when you try to take them off the counter top.

Place the soon-to-be crackers on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, cover with as much topping as you like, and bake for about 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Once then come out, let them cool off, then sandwich some of last week's marshmallow and some chocolate between your homemade graham crackers.

Ingredients:

2.5 cups graham, whole wheat pastry, or all purpose flour

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp kosher salt

7 tablespoons butter, cubed and chilled or frozen

1/3 cup honey

5 tablespoons of milk

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

3 tablespoons of sugar (for the topping)

1 teaspoon of cinnamon (also for the topping)

Procedure:

1. Mix the flour, salt, baking soda, and brown sugar (in a bowl or food processor)

2. Add the butter until you've got a coarse mixture (again, do it in a bowl or food processor)

3. In a separate bowl, mix the honey, milk, and vanilla extract.

4. Add the wet mixture to the dry (you guessed it, in a bowl or food processor)

5. Mix the dough until it comes together and form into a disk and chill.

6. Preheat the oven to 350.

7. Split the dough in two, and roll it out to 1/8" thick. Cut the crackers into the desired shape.

8. Place on parchment paper, top with the cinnamon sugar mixture and bake for 20 minutes.

English Muffins

English Muffins are on a list of things that I never even thought about making at home before this project. They just seemed unobtainable. They are not,

Start out by mixing sugar in some warmed milk, and by activating the yeast in warm water.  Melt 1/4 cup of shortening.

As a side note: here's a plug for using a mise en place. This recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of sugar, which easily fit in that small stainless steel cup. It also fits in that large plastic tub of sugar. One of those takes up a lot less space on my counter while I'm cooking.

Combine the milk, yeast, melted shortening, and 3 cups of flour. Mix until smooth.

Add salt, the rest of the flour, and knead until smooth. Transfer to a greased bowl, cover, and let it rise.

Punch the dough down, and roll it out to 1/2" thick. 

Cut it with a biscuit cutter, and place them on some wax paper sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover and let rise again.

Heat a pan or griddle, add a little oil, and over medium heat, cook them for 10 minutes on each side.

Let cool, then crack open with a fork, slather with butter, and eat.

For more nooks and crannies, add baking soda and make the dough a little wetter. You can even make it super wet to get really major nooks and crannies, but then you need to bake the english muffins in a mold to keep them from spilling out over the griddle.

Ingredients:

1 cup milk, warmed

2 tablespoons sugar

1 package yeast

1 cup warm water

1/4 cup melted shortening

6 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

Procedure:

1. Mix milk and sugar in one container, yeast and water in another.

2. Combine yeast, milk, melted shortening, and flour. Mix until smooth.

3. Add the rest of the flour, the salt, and continue kneading until the dough is soft. Transfer to a greased bowl and let rise.

4. Punch down the dough, roll it out, and cut it into rounds with a biscuit cutter.

5. Place the cut rounds on wax paper sprinkled with corn meal, and let rise again.

6. Cook each side for 10 minutes on a greased griddle or pan on medium heat.

7. Eat warm, or store in the fridge for weeks on end until you can finish all of them.

Egg Nog

Between the fourth thursday in November and December 25th, it is a magical time. For between those dates, it is permitted, nay encouraged to drink what is possibly the greatest created by man, demi-gods, or aliens: Egg Nog. And yet, there are cartons on the shelves of grocery stores filled with thickened liquids that purport to be egg nog which are, in truth, pale imitations of the glorious, quaffable custard that makes life during the holiday season worth living.

And, as is my custom, it is incredibly easy to make. Too easy, really, which is why I limit my total drinking season to around a month out of the year. Because with 8 eggs, 1 cup of sugar, and two pre-measured cartons of dairy product, plus about 5 minutes of your valuable time, you can make a drink that is as nourishing to your soul as anything in a clear container possibly could be. Also, if you are of the age, you can add bourbon to it.

So: 1/2 gallon whole milk, 1 pint heavy cream, 8 pasteurized eggs, 1 cup of sugar, and some nutmeg. Ingredients that, frankly, are frighteningly easy to memorize.

The hardest part of the procedure is separating the yolks from the whites. In eight eggs, it's not so bad, but if you're making a triple batch, which has the advantage of using up exactly two cartons of eggs, it does take a while. Save the whites if that's your thing, there are a million and one uses for them. For long term storage, put them into an ice cube tray, freeze them into cubes, then put the cubes in a zip-top bag.

Add a cup of sugar

And, without waiting for too long, start to beat the sugar into the egg yolks with an electric mixer or, if you are feeling particularly hard core, with a whisk

Until it turns from that into something a lot more like

When you lift the beaters or whisk out of the sugar/yolk mixture, it should fall down like a ribbon, as pictured vaguely above.

Add your cream

Add your milk

Add some freshly grated nutmeg

Mix to combine thoroughly

You can serve with or without bourbon

It should be noted that the above represents too much bourbon for proper drinking, but it does allow one the chance to take a hefty swig and then add some more nog into the glass to balance things out. Not efficient, but very effective.

Egg Nog

• Ingredients/Equipment
  • 8 egg yolk, pasteurized
  • 1 cup sugar
  • ½ gallon whole milk
  • 1 pint heavy cream
  • 5 oz. bourbon, (Or to taste - I'll generally add a bit more) (Well, I say a *bit*...)
  • 1 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
  • 1 Large Mixing bowl
  • 1 Mixer, Hand or Stand, but not handstand. That would be messy.
  • 2-3 Small bowls, For separating the egg yolks and whites.

1.In the bowl of a stand mixer or hand mixer, beat together the egg yolks and sugar until the yolks lighten in color and the sugar is completely dissolved.

2.Add the milk, cream, bourbon, and nutmeg. Stir to combine. Chill and serve. Or, as I generally do, just drink it right then and there.

Notes

This recipe contains raw eggs. They are pasteurized eggs, so should be perfectly safe, but if you have an allergy, or if you have a somehow weakened immune system, it would be wise to go with another recipe that cooks the nog to kill the critters inside. Also, you'll end up with a bunch of egg yolks at the end of this, because I don't like to add whipped egg whites to my nog. You can either make a heart-healthy omelet, or you could pour the egg whites into an ice tray (an *empty* ice tray) and freeze them for later use.