Food Adventures #26: Donut Dirty Bombs

I blame an article in Saveur Magazine.  But after reading it, it fired my imagination a bit, even more so when I found a couple of recipes in there for donuts that were baked and not fried.  I had never made donuts before-  didn't know how to even start or what would be involved but I liked the idea of giving it a shot.   I found a recipe for Cottage Street Bakery Dirt Bombs and decided to give it a try.

As an added bonus, we had our nieces with us over Spring Break so I had two great kitchen helpers that assisted me in making these things.  Almost immediately I noticed the way that the recipe was written was a little deceptive.   The totals for the ENTIRE recipe were listed at the top which is fine and good- but you weren't necessarily using all of any given ingrediant the first time you got to it.  As a result, I nearly used all my sugar instead of 1 cup of sugar to cream my initial blast of butter with.

The batter also threw me for a loop for a bit because the recipe says to beat until smooth.  And it says batter and not dough- so I was expecting to end up with a fairly smooth mixture similar to pancake batter and not a smooth mixture of what was close to cake dough than anything else.  I suppose I should have expected what I was getting though- they're not called doughnuts for nothing, right?

Once mixed, I scooped the indicated amount into a muffin tin (as required by the recipe) and what emerged were these...

...which looked a hell of a lot like muffins.  The next stop got even crazier...   I was supposed to take a truly obscene amount of butter:

And melt it down.   Then, you take the muffin like results, dip 'em in the butter and then roll them in cinnamon sugar to create a nice delicious crust around them- so they end up looking like this:

What results? Sweet, crunchy, light and fluffy goodness that almost melts in your mouth, they're that good.  There's a strange buttery undertaste to them that I didn't like at first but then it sort of morphed into a buttery goodness that I could get behind.  And the crust...  oh wow the crust is what makes these bad boys.  Cinnamon and suger make for a nice texture to these things.  I almost want to track down the Cottage Street Bakery and see what the originals are like.  (Just checked their website.  Apparently it's all the way out on Cape Cod.  Anyone up for a road trip?)

The Verdict:  Awesomeness personified.  I could get into making these donut things...  if you don't want to fry your donuts up, try these for a health boost.  (Though dipping them in butter and then rolling them in cinnamon sugar might undo some of that boost, it's worth it.) I say: two thumbs up.