A Delicious Weekend

Last weekend in response to Chris’s usual question “What do you want to do this weekend?”  I replied, “Let’s make Spiced Sugar Pumpkin Donuts, (a recipe from ‘The Red Spoon’, a cooking blog that I follow), as in, let’s make them together.”  Bless my sweet husband that he was up for the challenge!  I don’t think we have cooked together before, as Chris’s experience lies in areas other than kitchen arts (although he is an excellent dish washer!), but he caught on quickly.  We mixed up the dough, he combining the dry ingredients, I, the wet ingredients, and then we stuck the dough in the refrigerator, intending to fry the donuts up after the recommended amount of refrigeration time.  After 3 hours had gone by we decided we were feeling a little too lazy, so we waited until the next day to finish the process.

When we went to roll out the dough, it was tasty, but super sticky, like, impossible to work with sticky.  I don’t know if that was due to the humidity or the recipe, or both.  Anyway, I probably worked in another cup of flour before the dough was useable.  When I finally rolled the dough out I came to the realization that we don’t have a donut cutter.  I improvised by making the big circles using the rim of a glass…

 But it was Chris who was ingenious enough to figure out a cutter for the donut holes…

 He was quick to point out this was a clear benefit of his soda addiction, and I didn’t argue!

Chris had his first experience (in his memory, anyway) of rolling out dough and cutting it.  He did so well that maybe I will put him in charge of making Christmas cookies this year!

The donuts and donut holes were soon ready to fry…

We started heating the lard.  Yes, you read right, lard.  I have never fried anything in lard before, but the recipe indicated that lard was easier to work with than oil, and it’s a whole lot cheaper than canola oil, and well, we will probably only make donuts once a year at the most, so I think (hope) our arteries can take it!

Chris manned the frying pan while I eased the dough in the bubbling fat.  Okay, eventually I eased the dough in after the first few splashes that sent both Chris and I jumping to dodge the splatters of hot grease.  I told you I was new to frying things!

Look at this guy!  It does my heart good to see a man in an apron…especially one with flowers!

After the donuts came out of the frying pan and drained on a double layer of paper towel I dipped them in a mixture of sugar and spices.

Here’s the finished product, and let me say, they were sooo yummy, lard and all! 

 The happy cooks after a successful endeavor in the kitchen…

We enjoyed donuts and apple juice and shared some of the yumminess with our friends.

Just a little peak into our weekend-hope your upcoming weekend is fun and relaxing!