Apple Sauce Doughnuts

Beverage of choice: Milk

Soundtrack: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Audio Book


Yep. We've gone and done it.

Here is the homemade equivalent of food-nirvana. Make these and I defy you to not to eat a dozen in one sitting.

This recipe comes to us courtesy of Jake's mom. She makes them every year at Christmastime and they don't usually last too long.

Yep. They are that good.

This is my mixer. It was one of the best wedding presents we received. I would highly HIGHLY recommend using a mixer for this recipe if you have one. It helps the doughnuts achieve a fluffy texture with which hand-mixing can't compete.

Put 1/3 cup sugar and 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder in the bowl. I like my doughnuts really fluffy so I usually make sure that I have just a touch over 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder. Just barely.

This next ingredient is important that you don't substitute. You'll need 2 tablespoons of shortening. Yep, good old-fashioned Crisco. No replacements.

Go on, buy yourself a tub if you don't already have one. It won't go bad until after the apocalypse. I think the only things that keep longer are canned beans and twinkies.

Finally some color! After adding 1 teaspoon of salt, throw in 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon.

If you are a rebel like me, you'll add another dash or two of cinnamon. I'm not usually a huge fan of cinnamon, but these suckers are better with more!

2 eggs.
1 tablespoon milk.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
2 cups flour.
1/2 teaspoon baking soda. (again, if you put a touch more than that, it will make these things fluffy as a cloud.)

And for top billing: Apple Sauce.

I can't reiterate how weird it is that I'm obsessed with these doughnuts. I don't like cinnamon and I REALLY don't like apple sauce. Reason for the apple sauce is that when I was a kid and refused to take the chewable children's Tylenol I needed for things like fevers, my mom would grind it up and put it in apple sauce. Decades later, I can't eat apple sauce by itself without shuddering.

Blech.

But it makes for some killer doughnuts, so add 1/2 cup of it to your other ingredients and fire up the mixer.

When it's all mixed up, it should have a consistency thicker than cake batter and thinner than cookie dough. It should be pretty heavy and very sticky.

Now you need some vegetable oil. You'll need to be fairly liberal with it. Sometimes I even do these doughnuts in my wok because it's so big. Be sure that you use a pan that responds well to heat. I would recommend against cast iron here.

Make sure you have enough oil to allow the doughnuts to float. What is shown here is the MINIMUM amount you should use. (It was all I had left.)

I usually turn my oil on about 10 minutes before I'm going to start frying anything. I turn it on medium heat.

Take anywhere from 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of the dough and drop it in the hot oil. This is your little tester guy. (You can sing "Little Surfer Girl" to him with the alternate lyrics of "Little Tester Guy" if you want him to reach his full flavor-potential.)

Don't do anymore than 1 teaspoon because they really puff up when they start cooking. You'll end up with a doughnut the size of your fist, and that just takes forever to cook.

When the oil is bubbling around Little Tester Guy, feel free to give him some friends. See how cute and golden he is compared to his friends? He's been in there for about 3-4 minutes.

As you cook your doughnuts, your oil gets steadily hotter. If the oil bubbles too much when you drop the dough in, or if they start browning too fast, feel free to turn it down. It should always be pleasantly bubbly as you drop the doughnuts in.

See the tongs to the left of the pan? I cannot recommend making these without some form of tongs. The hot oil is just a little too dangerous.

These can get pretty dark before they're completely done on the inside. Don't be afraid to let them get brown.

When they are finished, put them on a plate with a paper towel lining so they can cool.

Sorry for the blurriness of this picture. Holding one doughnut while taste-testing another and taking a picture all at the same time gives you prize-winning art like this:

You can do a number of things to enhance the already awesome taste that you've just created.

You can do a powdered sugar frosting. (Butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and a touch of milk)
Or just powdered sugar by itself.

But my personal favorite is cinnamon and sugar.

Take about a cup of sugar and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon (and a pinch of nutmeg if you're feeling crazy) and combine them in a bowl. Then roll your doughnuts around in the mixture. I like to do this while they're still a little bit warm, so the sugar really sticks to the doughnut.

Delicious. That's all that can be said.

These are best when warm. Right out of the pan is great, but even after they've been hanging out in the fridge for a day or two (if they last that long) I would recommend popping them in the microwave for a little while.

Make these for your family, your friends, and even your enemies. You will be loved.

Deeply.


Here's the recipe:

Apple Sauce Doughnuts

1/3 cup sugar
1 and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons shortening
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup apple sauce
Several cups of vegetable oil

1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
nutmeg if desired

Combine all the ingredients into an electric mixer. Mix for 5-7 minutes.

Heat the vegetable oil on medium heat. Drop a test doughnut in. The oil is ready when it bubbles around the dough. Use tongs to flip your doughnuts and remove them from oil. Put them on a paper towel on a plate to cool and drain.

Mix sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg together and roll the doughnuts in the sugar mixture.

Enjoy!

~Jake and Renee

Spaghetti and Garlic Bread

Beverages: Red wine, Corona

Soundtrack: Fiction Family

I heart Italian food. 

Truly, madly, deeply.

This is a wonderful spaghetti sauce that is easy to make (no stewing of tomatoes and no difficult seasoning) and is scrumptious.

We usually serve this with Jake's amazing garlic bread and it always hits the spot.

Here are the ingredients you'll need for both:

Start off with your favorite beverage. Tonight it was Yellow Tail's Shiraz and Corona. We're really spendy. Can't you tell? ***NOTE*** Save some wine for the sauce. Thanks.

Melt a tablespoon of butter in a pot.

Then chop up a half of a red onion and two green onions and put them in the melted butter. Do this on a low heat. I usually do this part on 3 of 10. I like to cook my onions low and slow. It draws out all sorts of delicious flavors while mellowing the harsh onion-ness.

Let the onions simmer for a while. It will probably take about 10 minutes.

Go entertain yourself by cutting up some sun-dried tomatoes. I used about 4 or 5 here.

Here are your onions, now sufficiently translucent and mouth-watering:

Add your tomatoes and 1 teaspoon of minced garlic. Use 2 cloves if you have the fresh stuff.

Stir mixture gently.

Give these flavors a chance to mingle. The key to this dish is combining your flavors. This step is where the magic happens. Let it have another five minutes on the low heat, stirring occasionally.

Remove this mixture to a separate bowl.

Yay, beef! If I'm honest, raw meat grosses me out a little bit. I deal with it when I have to, but when Jake's around, I give him the opportunity to flex his culinary muscles. This next section is brought to you by Jake's culinary muscles. And his real ones. Which are also nice. Very nice.

Turn your heat to medium-high.

Put the beef in the pot with all the leftover flavored goodness form the onion mixture. Sprinkle it with some garlic salt and some seasoned salt. Don't go crazy. This is just enough to give the meat a little bit of flavor.

Take time to scoop out all the fat.

You know you want to.

All the healthy kids are doing it.

Turn the heat back down to 3 and put your onion mixture back into the pot with the strained beef.

(Technically you could just leave the onions in the pot and cook the beef in a frying pan, but then you would have to wash your original pot and said frying pan, and I'm not really into that sort of thing.)

Add your tomato sauce. (Forgive the ghost thumb.)

Also, add 1/2 teaspoon of Italian seasoning. If you don't have Italian seasoning, put in 1/4 teaspoon of oregano and 1/4 basil. If you have fresh herbs, I hate you a little bit because I don't.

Then the skies open, the angels sing, and it is time for you to add your red wine.

I know this will sound weird, especially after than angelic voices of the last step, but throw in 1 scant teaspoon of white sugar.

Trust me, my child.

Mama Nay would not steer you wrong.

There is more magic happening here than you know. Let your sauce simmer. I usually don't let it simmer for less than 30 minutes. You can even do it for up to 2 hours. Just make sure when you simmer that the heat is on 2 or lower. The goal is simmering, not scalding.

Stir as the spirit leads. Season as desired.  Sample as much as you can get away with.

While the wonderful flavors in the sauce are making themselves more wonderful, slice some bread. We like to use fresh french bread.

Either brush the bread with olive oil OR spread butter on the bread.

Put a thin layer of garlic salt on the oiled bread. Be sure you don't over-salt here. That makes for a lame eating experience later. I know from experience.

You're really going for a dusting here.

Sprinkle some cheese on top of those puppies. We did mozzarella and fresh-grated parmesan on these. Feel free to do either or.

Side note--do you see those two pieces of bread with holes in the middle? It must have risen that way at the bakery. Yeast is such a funny creature. Oh, but such a delicious creature.

That's another blog for another time, though.

Once they're dressed and ready, pop them under your broiler.

(We use tin foil for easy clean-up. Sorry, never promised to be environmentally friendly.)

Be sure you watch these like a hawk.

Cliche? Yes. Kidding? No.

They usually don't take more than 5-6 minutes to get all brown, bubbly, and delicious.

Pull them out when they look like this:

Make some Spaghetti. (I probably should have told you this before you started the bread.  Please forgive. Or serve the bread as an appetizer.)

Pull it out when they are nice and al-dente and whap them on a plate.

Whap is my mother's phrase. Can't help thinking it sometimes when it's hot noodles hit the plate. It just feels like the appropriate thing to say.

Whap.

Pile on the sauce and the cheese and finish the plate off with some of your garlic bread.

This goes wonderfully with a huge crunchy Caesar salad. Sadly, we had no Caesar dressing and this is not the type of blog that requires you to cut up anchovies.

I promise you, I will never make you cut up anchovies.

Enjoy!

Spaghetti and Meat Sauce:

1 tbsp butter

1/2 red onion, diced

2 green onions, diced

1 tsp minced garlic

4 or 5 chopped sun-dried tomatoes

3/4 to 1 lb ground beef

garlic salt

seasoned salt

1/2 tsp if Italian seasoning

1 scant tsp white sugar 

1 8oz jar of tomato sauce (mushroom is best)

1/2 cup of red wine

Melt butter in a pot. Dice red onion, green onion, and sun dried tomatoes. Sauté onions in butter over a low heat until they are transparent. Add garlic and sun dried tomatoes. Sauté for several more minutes. Remove to separate bowl.

Turn heat on pot up to medium-high and cook beef with a dusting of garlic and seasoned salt. Drain accordingly. Add the onion mixture, Italian seasoning, tomato sauce, red wine, and white sugar.

Allow sauce to simmer for at least 30 minutes on low heat.

Cook spaghetti.

Pour sauce over the spaghetti and serve.

Garlic Bread:

Desired slices of bread

olive oil/butter

garlic salt

mozzarella and/or parmesan cheese

Slice desired amount of bread. Brush on olive oil or spread on butter. Place slices of bread on a baking sheet.

SPARINGLY dust the bread with garlic salt.

Sprinkle on cheese.

Place in broiler for 5-6 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown and bubbling.

Remove from oven and enjoy!

Fried Rice

Fried rice is straight from heaven. Unless you're counting calories. In which case, stop reading this post immediately. This is not a low calorie dish. But if you're like me and you are a perpetual glass-half-full type, you know that fried rice minsters to the soul in a way that a spinach salad just can't.

And also, if you believe that the only place you can get good fried rice is a hibachi place, please give this recipe a try. Because of this recipe we are fried rice snobs. We walk out of every restaurant knowing we could have made better rice. For way less.

I'm not kidding. I don't kid about Asian food.

Ever.

Start with a half cup of uncooked white rice and stick it in your rice maker with a full cup of water. This recipe doesn't really work with brown rice. I understand it's not healthy. We already covered that fact. I make no apologies.

If you don't have a rice maker, cook a half cup of white rice however you do that. Then go out and buy a rice maker. They're wonderful.




Green onions are more important to me than a lot of things in life and this dish wouldn't be the same without them. You really only need one for this recipe, but if you wanted to go a little wild and use two, I wouldn't judge.

I don't judge when it comes to green onions.

I might judge green onion breath, but that's an entirely different issue.

Cut off the roots and dice it up to the point on the stalk where the green starts to get really deep and rich.




PSA from Jake: This is a two-beer dish. It takes two beers to make this dish from when you put the rice in the maker till you get to enjoy the Asian-inspired goodness. You should crack open your favorite beverage as the rice goes in the maker.

For Jake it's Fat Tire.




I like color in my food, so I added some carrots to the green onion. You could probably throw some corn, red peppers or snow peas in there, but I didn't have any handy.

I used about 4 or 5 baby carrots. If you only have the big ones, probably just less than half a carrot will do.



***Timing disclaimer***
Don't start this step until your rice is almost finished cooking. Thank you.
***Disclaimer over***

Now, grease the pan in which you will be frying your rice and crack some eggs. Scramble these with some salt (a few dashes) and pepper (also, a few dashes).

We like eggs to have a tangible presence in our fried rice. If you're not the hugest egg fan, cut it back to only one. At this step be sure your pan is on medium-high heat. This will help with the rice-frying later on.




Chop up the eggs so they blend into the rice well.




Remove to a separate bowl. In our household there is always an obligatory egg-testing that happens at this stage. This step is completely optional if you are not in our household.




Don't turn the heat down just yet. Put a tablespoon of vegetable oil on your pan.

(Note from Jake: You should be starting your second drink right about now.)




Dump your rice in the hot oil. It will crackle and pop a little bit, but don't worry, Rice Krispies do it too. It's how rice communicates to you that it enjoys this process of becoming delicious.

Turn the heat down to low. We're talking 2 or 3 on a 10 scale.




Dump in your eggies.




Soy sauce! Now this is the point where measuring doesn't really happen. We *think* it's about a quarter of a cup. Maybe exact measurements can be decided upon at a later date and this post will be amended.

Until then, turn that bottle upside down over your rice and count to 5. If you like salty things, make it 5mississippi. Don't go nuts. You can always add more later.

We're so helpful and detailed, aren't we?

Be sure you're stirring this around as the pan is still hot and you don't want the rice to burn.



Now add 1/2 teaspoon garlic power, 1/8 teaspoon salt (optional because the soy sauce is pretty salty on its own), and 8 to 10 turns of pepper with your pepper grinder. If you have the powdery stuff, put in 1/8 of a tsp.




Add your chopped veggies and 1/2 tsp of sesame seeds. They add a wonderful texture to the rice.

Yum...



Now add two tablespoons of margarine. We have tried this with butter and it doesn't taste quite right. Though bad for your heart, bust out the Shed Spread Country Crock for this recipe.

It's worth it.




Now, center yourself, grasshopper, and channel your inner hibachi chef. (Maybe sans the knife juggling for your safety and the safety of those around you.) Pile that rice up into a neat little mound.




You pan should have cooled down enough that you can focus on something else. Go finish grilling your rib-eyes (we love steak and fried rice). Go change over some laundry. Go tweet about what an incredibly talented hibachi chef you are.

This is also the point to check your seasonings. If you want to add more soy sauce, go for it. If you need more pepper, knock yourself out.




Yum. This would taste delicious with some shrimp mixed in. It goes great with teryaki chicken too.



Here's the recipe:

Jake's Fried Rice:
1/2 cup uncooked rice
1 cup water
1 green onion
1/2 carrot (or 4 or 5 baby ones)
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of oil
soy sauce
1/8 teaspoon salt (optional)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds
2 tablespoons margarine

Cook 1/2 cup of white rice. Dice onions and carrots. Set aside. When rice is almost finished cooking, scramble two eggs on medium-high heat in a frying pan or wok. Add a dash of salt and a dash of pepper. Remove cooked eggs to a separate bowl.

Put oil in the hot pan and dump the cooked rice in. Turn the heat down to 2 or 3 (medium-low). Add eggs. Dump in soy sauce for about five seconds. Rice will not be completely covered, but should turn brown when mixed.

Add garlic powder, pepper and salt. Stir. Add veggies and sesame seeds. Stir again. Add margarine. Stir and taste. Adjust seasonings as you see fit.

Pile the rice up and let it cook for another 5-10 minutes, stirring once or twice.

Enjoy!

Jake and Renee