Thursday, July 28, 2011

Do or donuts, there is no try.


So my daughter has a severe peanut allergy and thus cannot have any bakery goods, especially donuts, due to the proximity to loose peanuts. It's really sad; not only will she never be able to eat Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or PB&J, she can't have a Timmy Ho's donut.

Well we've decided not to let her live deprived of some of the tasty treats we all get to enjoy. So we bought a donut pan and last night I made some for the first time. I spent some time finding a good recipe to try. I settled on this recipe. It was a challenge since it involved using yeast, which I've never cooked with before. Jaime helped me out a lot figuring out some of the more confusing parts with the yeast and getting them ready for the oven.

I started the donuts after we put the baby to sleep, around 7:30 pm and didn't finish until 11:30. I made about three dozen. There was more dough but I figured how much more do we need? In the end I decided that the dough looked and tasted a lot like pizza dough so we may just wind up buying a ball of fresh dough from Wegman's next time and using that instead.

I did make them with organic flour and sugar plus there was not a lot of sugar in the recipe, so I felt better about them than most donuts. I did coat them in sugar glaze or cinnamon and sugar, so it's not like they were sugar free. But they're donuts so they can't be too good.

It was a very gratifying and educational experience and they baby devoured them in the morning which was awesome! Next time I make them I want to focus on presentation. These donuts were a little busted looking and had very plain toppings. Next time I'd like to try my had at something like this. I also want to make a gourmet cake, from scratch, for her birthday.

I have a fantasy to start a bakery that specializes in making goods for people with allergies so they can enjoy safe and delicious treats like the rest of us. As far as I know there is nothing catering to that niche in Western New York.

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