Baked Chocolate-Covered Doughnuts & Little Sad Sack Comic

American Dessert

BAKED CHOCOLATE-COVERED DOUGHNUTS

INGREDIENTS

1 cup pastry flour or regular flour if not available
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons milk
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 tablespoons creamy milk chocolate frosting
sprinkles (optional)

SPECIALTY UTENSILS

doughnut mold, or tray, for 6 doughnuts
no-stick spray.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in medium mixing bowl until all ingredients appear to be well mixed. Add milk, eggs, and vegetable oil to another medium bowl. Blend with whisk until mixture starts to get foamy. Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture and mix until all is combined.

Spray doughnut mold with no-stick spray. Scoop combined mixture into each dough form until half full. Put in oven and cook at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. Doughnuts should be done when they spring back when gently poked.

Remove doughnut mold from oven. Let sit for about 3 to 4 minutes. Gently pry doughnuts from mold with knife or small wooden spatula. Use wooden spatula to gently (Yes, today’s cooking word is gently) spread chocolate frosting on top half of doughnut.

(Lots of people love doughnuts. The primal drive of the caveman to pounce on a bison has nothing on the modern person’s urge to eat a doughnut. This urge is so intense that your doughnuts might get eaten before they are even coated with chocolate. That’s okay. They’re happy and you will have less to clean up.)

TIDBITS

1) So many places proclaim themselves to be “Donut Shops” that I ever open one of those stores, I will say that my doughnuts are made with “real dough.”

2) “Dough” as American slang for money dates back to 1851.

3) I’ve heard that some economists claim that the size of the doughnut hole correlates with the health of the economy. When the economy booms, more dough gets used and so the doughnut hole becomes smaller.

4) My degree is in economics and I’ve never seen such studies, not even in my wilder classes or in the most blood-stirring journals of economics.

6) The exciting Gertrude Stein once used the phrase, “the hole of the doughnut,” to describe people personalities or souls.

7) Empirical economists use multiple equations replete with Greek letters to examine hypotheses.

8) During such examinations we economists like to eat pizza. However, we never turn down a good doughnut. In this way, we are like people everywhere.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.