Canadians love Tim Horton’s. Who knew? Must be a slow new day at the Toronto Star. But Tim Horton’s, I will say, does make great doughnuts, especially cake doughnuts. It’s interesting that the further north you go on the continent, the more cake doughnuts you find. The further south, the more raised. I don’t know […]
READ ONReader Pat K. writes in to ask if whether the recipe below would work if she did it the old-fashioned way and made a dough out of it instead of a batter. The answer is yes, though the doughnuts won’t be as light. Just reduce the amount of milk in the recipe by about two […]
READ ONCake doughnuts, especially when they’re made from scratch, are extremely fussy things. I can’t emphasize enough how important temperature is to getting them just right. The most common problem with cake doughnuts is an too-high batter temperature. When the temperature of the batter goes up (usually because the temperature of the room goes up) the […]
READ ONOther than frying you mean? The answer is of course nutmeg. Without it a cake doughnut just tastes like a fried ring of cake. Not bad, but not quite “right” either. Those of you with older cookbooks might find that the “old time” doughnut recipes in it call for mace. But then what is mace […]
READ ONRegular commentator Hans writes in to ask: So what’s this about food not browning well in really-fresh oil? I’m glad you asked that, Hans! For indeed people who really know frying will tell you that perfectly clear, fresh oil doesn’t cook food particularly well. That’s very true. The question is: why? The answer, again, is […]
READ ONHow long does it take for good fry oil to turn bad you mean? That depends on a number of factors, chief among them the type of fat you’re using. In general, you want one that’s fairly stable (i.e. resistant to breakdown) and neutral flavor-wise. For me that means either vegetable or canola oil. Solid […]
READ ONTo understand how the ’76 Steelers can turn into the ’08 Lions, we need to back up a bit and talk about fat composition. Kitchen fats are what are known as trigycerides. Which is to say their molecules are made up of three long-chain fatty acids attached to a “backbone” of glycerol. Imagine a capital […]
READ ONHope everybody had a great Memorial Day! Before I get back after my doughnuts, I wanted to put up a couple of last thoughts on the candy show in Chicago last week. One thing that has since occurred to me is the way in which the show echoed some of the themes from a chocolate […]
READ ONI’d be lying if I said that this wasn’t one of the best times I’ve had on the job in recent memory. However the truth of the matter is that there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot there that would have been of interest to pastry makers or bakers (except maybe those folks who […]
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