Spudnuts were a childhood favorite. Making some of my own has been on my to-do list for awhile and I finally got to the task.
I used this recipe from Taste of Home. Be forewarned, this recipe makes a lot of dough, equivalent to two loaves of bread. Unless you have a large crew to feed and are blissfully unconcerned about obesity or cardiac health, you might want to try a half recipe.
Spudnuts make use of an old baking trick by adding mashed potatoes to make the dough moister. I substituted buttermilk for whole milk. I also added freshly ground nutmeg. I mixed the dough by hand to avoid making the donuts tough.
I cut the donuts with my trusty cutter and into the oil they went.
A few minutes later, I coated them with a glazed coating made of powdered sugar, water, and a little lemon. The donuts were certainly moister and with a denser, richer body than a regular donut. They didn't rise quite as much as I would have liked but overall this was a very successful experiment.
I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...



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