Bacon Doughnuts with Maple Glaze - Vote For Hope

I cannot be clear enough about this…if you love doughnuts and if you love bacon then you must make these bacon maple doughnuts…they are infinitely superior to plain doughnuts, more addicting than crack muffins, and fraking tasty with a hot cup of coffee…really they’re enormously excellent!
These babies are super simple to make; dice up a quarter pound of the best bacon you can find and cook it until crispy, let it cool a bit then work it into the doughnut dough, roll the critters and fry them up all according to the directions for the plain doughnuts. Top them with a glaze made from powdered sugar and real maple syrup. WoooHooo…trust me on this, you do not want to miss out on this tasty, porcine treat.
Take some time to plan your day on Tuesday, November 4th. If you haven’t voted already then you may want to head to your polling place early on Tuesday, maybe bring a book, a snack, digital music, water…whatever you need to make the wait in line easier to handle. Voting is just like a bacon doughnut…it’s something you don’t want to pass up. So plan ahead people, make arrangements, and vote.
Homemade Doughnuts - a timeless classic
I am a huge time travel geek. One of my favorite books of all time is The Time Travelers Wife and I adore it because it combines two of my loves, time travel and libraries. I bet you had absolutely no idea how really, incredibly geeky I am…but that’s me the uber-geek. When I was a kid I played library, you know like how some kids play house, I even had check-out cards for all my books and I was really into the Dewey Decimal System. Oh those were good times.
When I made these doughnuts I couldn’t stop thinking about time travel and it’s actually all because of Homer Simpson. In a Treehouse of Horror episode Homer attempts to repair a toaster and ends up traveling through time to prehistoric time. He thoughtfully remembers not to touch or alter anything in order not to screw up time but of course he does and when he’s transported back to his home on Springfield Terrace he finds it changed in weird and disturbing ways. At one point he returns and his hateful sisters-in law are both dead, he has a fabulous house, a luxury automobile, and Bart and Lisa are well behaved, but when he asks if there are doughnuts Marge says “Doughnut? What’s a doughnut?” and Homer angrily goes back to prehistoric times as the scene shows doughnuts falling from the sky at Springfield Terrace and Marge says “Look, it’s raining again”.

Now my association of these almost cartoon looking doughnuts and time travel makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? These are classic cake style doughnuts that are so easy to make and taste so unbelievably good that you’ll kick yourself for not having made them sooner. My neighbors granny use to make these for her when she was a kid and now she makes them for her family. Give them a try, they are really easy and if you have a thermometer so you can monitor the temp of the oil you’ll have no problems making these fresh little babies.
Doughnuts
Printer-friendly recipe
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ a whole nutmeg grated fine
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
Doughnut topping
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Canola oil for deep frying
Sift the first six ingredients together into your mixer bowl. In another bowl combine the yogurt and milk and mix. Add the 1 cup of sugar and the 2 eggs, stir to combine. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix on medium until the two parts are well combined.
Dump the dough out onto a well floured counter and roll the dough out to a ½ inch thickness. The dough is going to be very sticky so just use as much flour as you need to prevent it from sticking to the counter. Cut out the donughnuts with a doughnut cutter or a drinking glass then cut out the center hole with something that will cut a teeny-tiny circle. I used some odd piece out of my junk drawer.
Transfer the doughnuts to a floured baking sheet. Combine the sugar and cinnamon for the topping and lay out a couple of baking racks over some baking sheets lined with paper towels.
Put a heavy dutch oven on a burner with a medium flame and add the canola oil. I think I added about 1 ¾ quarts of oil. Heat it to 350°F and then carefully drop the doughnuts into the oil. I’m able to fit in about 6 at a time. Check your oil temp and if it has dropped below 340°F you’ll want to turn up the heat until the temperature returns to 350°F. Don’t let the temperature go over 355°F because then you’ll burn the doughnuts.
Gently flip the doughnut when it is a rich brown on one side. When the other side has browned you should carefully remove it from the oil and place it on the first rack. Wait a few minutes so you don’t burn your fingers then roll it in the sugar/cinnamon and place it on the other rack. Continue cooking the doughnuts until they are all done. Serve while they are still warm.
