Adventures in Baking! With The Great Ethan and Cheryl Allen.

Hmm, Baking?   I guess.   I’m not really sure if this would fall under "”Baking” or “Cooking”.    I Guess I’ll let you be the judge.  Today,  Cheryl made me help her make Doughnuts ( Or Donuts)  Ever since Minneapolis,  Cheryl has been obsessed with the Bacon Doughnuts from Glamor Doll.  Now I will admit they were good,  but Cheryl has in her mind that they were “out of this world” and just HAS to replicate them on some level. So…Enter the Doughnut Book,  Rachael Ray, and any other source she can find; along with a spare afternoon to try them out.   

Now, it is difficult to gauge how things will taste from the picture or the ingredience of the recipe.  However, “Bacon Doughnuts” were on the list in several of these sources.  So….Off we go. 

As usual,  I’m the mixer.   Why purchase an expensive Kitchen Aid appliance when you have the Great Ethan Allen as your husband?   Besides, if we actually DID buy a Kitchen Aid mixer, it would be for me because I LOVE mechanical things…..and the Kitchen is kind of my place.   Cheryl points this out ever time she wants to cook/bake something and needs my help.   She points out how I always seem to claim ownership of the kitchen whenever there is cooking involved but never when dishes need to be done.  ( It’s simple:  I’m a cook not a bus boy!   I graduated years ago and simply on principle can not allow myself to slip back!)  But I digress…..This is about the doughnuts!

  After mixing up the dough,  It is time to fry them up!  ( See,  baking?   Deep frying should be cooking, right?) After a few mistakes, we figured out how best to do them so they, at the very least, look like doughnuts.  The frying did not take very long; only about 2-3 minutes each batch.  We then had to turn to the next phase of the operation: the bacon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not just any bacon, THICK CUT bacon!  That is first coated with maple brown sugar glaze!  Can you almost feel the Heart and Pancreas seize up upon hearing “sugar coated bacon”.  After mixing up this concoction, I have to coat the bacon and then bake it in the oven for 25 minutes.   It reminded me of those sugar coated almonds you buy at the fair or in the Mall…..only this is BACON!

    And, as if this is not enough to send any nutritionist to therapy, we add the maple glaze to the top of the doughnut.   So…let us recap:   Deep fry the doughnut,  frost the top with maple/sugar glaze, and top off with maple/sugar coated bacon!   Can you feel the LOVE!   My goodness, the convenience store down the road does this everyday ( without the bacon, of coarse!) and I never think about how deadly they are to my system….but they sure taste good.

    You may be thinking,”Why Make so many of such a deadly item?”  Well,  here is where the beauty of being employed comes in.  We plan on sharing these weapons of MASS INDUCTION with our co-workers.   Hopefully there are enough takers so we will not have to eat them all ourselves.  So in the end, it is a win win win!   Our co-workers win because they can have a free doughnut for breakfast.  We win because they will think we are cool for bringing free food and because we will not have to eat them all ourselves.   And  I win, because this allows Cheryl to get that “cooking bug” out of her system and I don’t have to weigh 300 lbs after eating ALL of them myself.   You may be wondering why that would happen.  Well, it is a throw back to growing up as a kid and being forced to eat everything on my plate.   I simply hate to waste food.  It’s stupid!  But the idea of throwing away several dozen doughnuts just because there is no one else to eat them bothers me.   It shouldn’t! but that indoctrination my mother put into me growing up has seriously messed me up.  

Other than the doughnut backing/frying/cooking….we had a rather productive weekend in the folding and key fob creation.   And it snowed….AGAIN!   about 4 inches total this weekend.    It is COLD…..and I will be happy when the temperatures finally get above freezing later this week. 

So, that is all the adventures with Ethan And Cheryl for now.   I’ll have to post more pics of the origami later when I actually have time to take the pictures and am not pressed into forced labor as a cooking supervisor/incredience mixer. Hope everyone has a great upcoming week.  Enjoy!