We had another snowy day today…
My son once again woke up and happily declared it to be Christmas, and I had to bring him down a notch or two and patiently explain that we haven’t even quite reached Thanksgiving yet.
“But there’s snow outside,” he countered.
How can a mother argue with that? It really is beginning to look a lot more like Christmas than my favorite autumn holiday. (To be honest, it has been harder than normal this year to refrain from putting up our Christmas tree. Normally we’re pretty stubborn about that and wait until after Thanksgiving, insisting on letting all the pumpkin and ‘thankfulness’ decor in our house get its fare share of the spotlight. But with the unseasonably cold weather covering us in a blanket of white, I’m ready, my friends! I’m ready to pull out all the white, cozy, twinkling lights!!).
“I know,” I said, agreeing with the case my almost four-year-old had presented. “Christmas is coming, I promise!”
He crossed his arms, thought a bit, and then announced, “It’s a good day for donuts!”
I couldn’t let him down twice, could I? (Let’s ignore the fact that donuts sounded really, really good to me as well). But since the roads were a bit slick and this mama was enjoying a let’s-stay-in-our-jammies kind of day (which RARELY happens in this busy household), I decided to try my hand again at homemade, baked donuts.
I’ve baked them before, but I honestly wasn’t a huge fan of the last recipe I used. So I decided to try the mini donuts recipe from the Granny Girl’s blog. As you can see from their pic below, their donuts are basically the cutest things since cupcakes. Seriously though. I want to reach into my computer and sample each one. But then again, they’re almost too pretty to eat!
The struggle is real!
I had to give myself a mini pep-talk that this afternoon was merely for testing the recipe and that the mini donuts were for pure taste-bud enjoyment. Therefore, my donuts were NOT going to look like the pic above. I didn’t have pretty sprinkles, flakes of coconut, or walnuts on hand… (And I was cooking with a four year old. ‘Nough said).
It is VERY important, if you’re a mom, to give yourself these peptalks sometimes. There will be plenty of time later on for pretty… Right now, your focus is keeping salmonella from hosting a party in your toddler’s mouth and sweeping up the flour before someone wipes out on the kitchen floor. (Did you realize that flour sprinkled on a kitchen floor is dangerously slippery? It is. Trust me. Also trust me when I say that toddlers are drawn to egg-shells the way we moms are drawn to coffee. It’s like the salmonella is calling to them).
So yeah, the sprinkles can sit this one out.
The recipe was really easy to whip together, and was – in my opinion – a winner. The last recipe I’d used to make baked donuts was muffin-like in texture, which was disappointing. These have more of a cake-like consistency, which I was looking for. I also really like the slight hint of spice that the nutmeg and cinnamon add.
The one tip I learned was this… Don’t over-fill your donut pan! The first batch I cooked lost their holes, because they rose so much. So they were more like muffin tops. 🙂 But I corrected that for the second batch, and those came out perfect. (Obviously, my kiddos didn’t care either way and gobbled them all up, donut holes or not).
I definitely hope to re-make these sometime soon (maybe for the holidays) and put in the effort to decorate them all pretty! How adorable would a platter of these be for Christmas?!? But for today, I kept some plain and then tossed the rest in granulated or powdered sugar.
These were perfect for little fingers and went down fast! Thank you, Granny Girls, for such a delish baked donut recipe. 🙂
If you want to try this out yourself, check out the copy of their recipe HERE.
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