Cooking Experiment: Apple Cider Donuts, plus Bonus Ramen Pic

[tuftears]

You might recall that about a year ago, I took a donut making class. At the end of the class, I picked up a box of apple spice donut mix because I was fairly sure it would be a flavor I'd enjoy, without being ridiculously sweet.

Well. The other day I glanced at the package sitting all alone in my pantry and noticed the expiration date was a month ago. Oops. o_o

So I figured I'd better get around to using it up. It's fall, a good time for fall flavors, anyway. Fortunately the box instructions weren't too complicated... These are cake donuts after all, not fried donuts, so I didn't have to mess with yeast rising, or breaking out a whole bottle of oil to deep fry anything. This is good for my sanity.



Lacking milk and real eggs (yeah, yeah, tugrik, I could have taken you up on your offer but...) I used applesauce and eggbeaters. No big deal, flavor-wise, but I was a bit worried that it wouldn't work out for some Science-y reason. They certainly didn't look that prepossessing in the oven.



The first time I opened the oven to check on them, they seemed rather too pale still, so I gave it a few more minutes. The next batch, I adjusted the time upward and it came out just perfect. I used a silicone spatula to pop them out of the donut pan, no problem.



Then I used a small plate with melted butter to wet the donuts down on both side and rolled them in a bowl filled with the cinnamon sugar topping that came with the donuts. Ta-dah! These look legit.

They tasted pretty good. I nommed two immediately and put the rest away in ziploc bags in the freezer, so hopefully they'll reconstitute well by microwaving in the future.

Oh, here, have some bonus ramen:



The other weekend I hassled dracosphynx into lunch so I could hand over his birthday gift; we went to Mitsuwa, intending to get Japanese curry, but he noticed the line for the ramen shop wasn't too long so we tried that instead. It looks like the only kind of meat they serve is... well, pork. They gave a choice of broths for the ramen; I had the regular (extra pork) ramen, while my friend had the... fermented soy sauce or somesuch?

It was pretty good but not exactly a religious experience; the noodles seemed a teensy bit gummy. Still, filling and tasty!

Comments

[rowyn]

:9

So other than the hole, is there a difference between cake donuts and cake?

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

More crispy brown crust. :) It's all about the Maillard reaction/caramelization of sugar on the surface.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

=o.o=.

So if I were to pour one of my cobbler batters into an angel food cake pan, I might get an uber-donut? =^.^=

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

It may not scale correctly; heat travels from the surface to the inside so you want to avoid having something that's burnt on the outside but soggy dough in the center of the ring. You might be able to avoid this by cooking at a medium-low temperature for a while, then turning the temperature up for browning, but it would require experimenting. Otherwise than that, you'd probably wind up with a ring-shaped cake. Scale matters for texture!

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

If I were to do this, I'd make sure that the thickness was comparable to what I have when baking the cobbler in a casserole dish. The cobbler is already cooked at a low temperature for a long time. Caramelizing the surface could indeed be done, but mostly I just wanted to call a ring-shaped cake a donut for amewsment value =^.^=.

(I'm of the deep-fry-in-oil school of donuts, though I haven't done that in quite some time.)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Go for it then. ;) I wouldn't expect much to happen to the flavor, but if the crispy brown surface is what you want, you'll indeed get more.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

I find that actually detracts from the taste of a cobbler. It happens unavoidably with my apple cobbler recipe (as even at low temperatures, there's a fine balancing act between "inside undercooked" and "outside overcooked). The only recipe I have where that's done deliberately is the sugar pie (the surface has to start to brown/caramelize).

If I were to do it at all, all I'd want is license to say "I have it on good authority that this counts as a donut" if presenting friends with a ring-shaped cake half-covered in icing =^.^=.


(That might even be worth doing for game day; the normal host's stepkids may be around once all of the "moving in together" issues get sorted out.)