donuts

Cat-shaped "minciunele"

Publié le 20 Juin 2021 par Charly C.

Catégories : #Cooking, #dessert, #food, #recipe, #short story, #sweets, #tips, #donuts, #doughnuts

Hello, world!

Today I'll share with you my results trying to make a common Romanian dessert, called "minciunele." This word means little lies and they're a type of donuts.

As you can see from the pictures, this recipe was supposed to appear quite some time ago. In fact, i had already posted this recipe on my first blog, before i rebranded for the first time.

When I first started blogging, I thought i'd have a cooking blog and another blog for other stuff. As we all know, things changed, and now i have this "general" blog and my site/blog dedicated to reviews, called Being Obscure, hosted by WordPress.

The recipe goes something like this, and you can see the original recipe and results here. This is the blog dedicated to recipes for Romanian foods. The post shows you how these are supposed to look like, and you can clearly see my cats don't look as nice as the original.

If you want to know why i chose to shape my donuts as cats, I'll add the story AFTER the recipe. I recently realized people don't appreciate too much talking BEFORE the recipe. So, without further ado, here we go!

Ingredients:

500 g flour (1lb?)
2 eggs
2 yolks
2 tablespoons of sour cream
1 teaspoon of baking powder

Additional ingredients:

some powdered sugar for coating
some sunflower oil for frying; whatever other type of oil you use for frying food should also work.

Method:

Beat the egg whites until they're fluffy.
Mix the egg yolks with the sour cream and gently fold this mix into the egg whites.
Sieve the flour and the baking powder on top of the mix.
Gently fold these also into the mixture above, until you have a smooth dough.

The original recipe doesn't say to let the dough rest and raise a bit, so I didn't do that. However, I think it should be done, and i think it should be at least 30 minutes.

Roll the dough onto a sheet on the work table (about 5 mm or 2/8in thick) and cut your shapes. Of course, you can cut whatever shapes you want - i also did that.

To cut shapes you can use cookie cutters, a glass, or directly a knife. The difference is that with the knife things will be easier and much faster, while with the cookie cutters/glass you'll need to reroll the dough. You don't want to waste all that yumminess. ;)

Fry your shapes in hot oil, over medium heat, and on both sides. If you have too many donuts and you run low on oil, add some more oil, and make sure it gets hot before you fry more donuts.

When they're brown on both sides, remove them and place them on a plate or a bowl covered with some paper towel or (unscented, dry) paper handkerhiefs. The paper will absorb the excess oil.

In the picture above, you can see I'm frying donuts in other shapes than cats.

Once you're done frying all the dough, sprinkle some confectioner's sugar on top. These are always better with some of that on top.

I never tried, but these could also be good with some chocolate or cream on top.

Bon Appétit! Enjoy!

Why cat-shaped?

I believe that at some point in 2017, the butter we usually buy came with a little cutter. There were 3 shapes: cat, car, and i forgot what else. They were meant to help mothers make cute sandwiches for their kids, to entice them to eat and enjoy the food more.

I got the butter that had the cat-shaped cutter. I never really used it since, but one day, when i made these donuts, Anna jokingly challenged me to make them look like cats, thinking it would be impossible for me to do so.

The expression on her face when i pulled out the cat-shaped cookie cutter? PRICELESS!

So, this is how you make another type of easy doughnuts. i hope you liked the story about the cookie-cutter shaped like a cat as well.

As a reference, i have 2 more cutters for cookies: one shaped like spectacles and another shaped like lips. These are from H&M Home. I got them on sale, i think right before the SHTF last year.

The yellow disk is a cookie or cake decorator i found in the lid of a jar of Nutella. I forgot the year. maybe 2019.

See you next time!

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Fool proof doughnuts

Publié le 29 Novembre 2020 par Charly C.

Catégories : #Cooking, #sweets, #dessert, #doughnuts, #donuts, #recipe

Hello world~~

DISCLAIMER: This article was originally published back in 2013. I edited it once, to add another picture, because i though the presentation lacked a little. Now, in 2020, i remade these doughnuts, and i took more pictures. I want to add them here, so this means this article will be republished.

My friend showed me the recipe for these doughnuts on a local website and since I had all the ingredients, I figured I should try it out.

The best part is that they’re done so fast, you don’t need to wait for the dough to raise, and they’re very yummy and light! You’ll want to double the quantities the 2nd time around, hehe ;)

You probably won’t believe me, but even a 14 year old boy made these, or it was him sharing the recipe.

The pictures in this article/recipe are mine.

The original, sad picture i used. oh, gosh.

INGREDIENTS

200 grams yogurt
1 egg
3 spoons sugar
some baking powder
1 pinch of salt
150 grams flour
1 Tbsp lemon peel – lemon essence works fine too.

I have to mention that this year we learned my friend can't eat a lot of things, including gluten, or at least not a lot of it.

So you can replace regular flour with gluten free flour or whole grain flour.

This year i also skipped the lemon peel (zest) or essence as well. Instead, i used vanilla extract. My friend was diagnosed with asthma, and lemon essence is bad for them, as some of you may know.

I wish mine turned out this pretty :(

METHOD

Mix all the ingredients together. Originally, I was supposed to add them one by one, but we want to be as quick as possible, even if we stay the whole day at home.

Make sure everything is well incorporated though. The dough should be a bit thicker than the mayonnaise. Thicker dough will make rounder doughnuts, while a thinner one will turn into funny looking doughnuts.

I forgot to take a picture of the dough after i mixed it. Therefore, here you can admire my dough almost at the end.

My dough was thicker, thus the doughnuts have a more regular, ball-like shape.

This is the time to adjust the sweetness, by adding more sugar if you so wish. Of course, this means you'd have to taste the dough. Make sure not to eat it all. Whatever you may add, incorporate well once again. It should be smooth.

You can even add more flour, to make the dough thicker. IT should still be a bit runny though. My spoon is a hint to why.

At this point I added some grounded nuts back in 2013. - Side note: Reading this in 2020, i recall no such thing, but it must have happened.

What mine turned out like :(

You'll now need a small pot or a frying pan.

You need to have a thick layer of oil for frying in there. As you may know, doughnuts need to be fried.

Heat the oil up. Don't use too much heat. I used low to medium heat. I kept it constant.

Take a spoon, scoop dough out and drop it in the pan. You can fry more at once, depending on how big your pot or pan is.

I could fit about 6 in my pan. It's normal for the doughnuts to have "legs" or whatever you want to call the little drops that fell from the spoon, next to the actual doughnuts.

The softer/thinner the dough, the more such "legs" will form. These "legs"are also a bit wasteful, because they get burned and nobody will eat them. I think i added more flour to make the dough thicker to have less waste.

You'll fry them on both sides, until they become golden/brown. They'll start floating at some point. That's when you'll turn them on the other side.

If you feel they become brown too fast, lower the heat a little. I cook with gas, so i can't really tell you how high my flame was. It was one of the largest burners, which was a bit too much for this smallish pan.

You'll have to turn then around to check their color, to be even on both sides.

When the first ones are done, remove them to a plate, or a large bowl. Make sure to use a paper towel on the bottom, as the doughnuts will still leak some oil. You don't want the ones at the bottom to sit in a puddle of oil, ewww.

When you’re done frying all of them, just sprinkle them with confectioner’s sugar, chocolate syrup, or anything else you prefer for more yummyness.

Bon appetit!

entry edited in May 2018 first, then in 2020. all pictures are mine.

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