Skip to main content

donut mania

One of the side effects of the economic downturn has been some great sales.  Over the weekend, I found an automatic donut maker on sale at a deep discount.  This fulfilled a lifelong dream.  I had long considered larger units, such as the Donut Robot, but I thought them impractical.  Not only are they expensive, but they are hard to clean and generally require a professional kitchen.  This unit is designed for home use and promised to have tractable maintenance, although donut-making and messes go together like donuts and chocolate icing.

The unit presents itself as a donut maker.  At one point in the manual it refers to mini-donuts.  Micro-mini-donuts would be more accurate.  They're about an inch and a half in diameter with a little tiny hole in the middle.  But they taste great when they come fresh out of the machine.  Plus the process is fascinating to watch in a Homer-esque way.  The machine squeezes out a round halo of dough which it lets sit in oil.  It then very carefully flips it over and lets it float down the river of oil until it reaches a platform that gently lifts the donut  and deposits it in a tray.

Throughput is a problem.  We only get about 2 donuts per minute at the moment.  Given the tiny size of the donuts, that's a long wait for a meal.  This dough may have been too thick, resulting in overly small donuts.  The fundamental throughput problem, though, needs to be solved by parallelism.  We hope to build a multiprocessor with several donut machines that can produce the volume of donuts required to keep crowds of students happy.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Asheville NC: Luella's BBQ

Luella's is a nouvelle BBQ outfit on the north side of Asheville. It is nestled among the trees in a lovely neighborhood. The restaurant has lots of windows for inside seating and plenty of outside seating. Service was courteous and amazingly fast. This is a combination plate with pork and brisket. Both were very moist and tender. For the pork, I tried both the mild and hot vinegar sauces. To my surprise, I preferred the milder one because it didn't assert itself too much. I enjoyed the spicy tomato sauce for my brisket. The hushpuppies were very good. The fried okra was fresh out of the fryer and excellent. The slaw was of the vinegary variety, which I usually enjoy, but this version is heavy on the white stuff and didn't have quite enough variety in tastes for me.
Post a Comment
Read more

Hapeville: Pit Boss BBQ

I just had a very satisfying meal at Pit Boss BBQ in Hapeville. I missed it on my first drive down the street---its location in the back of a liquor store is pretty low key. However, I considered that location to be auspicious for the quality of my meal, and I turned out to be right. The smoke billowing out of the chimney greeted me as I pulled into my parking space. The restaurant offers pork ribs and pulled pork, chicken, brisket, wings, and burgers. This is a popular place, so expect to wait a few minutes in line and then a few more minutes for your plate to arrive. In the mean time, you can entertain yourself with the Theater of BBQ that the store presents. The counter is a frontpiece to the main stage of BBQ as revealed by the kitchen window. The front of the kitchen centers around the grill with its burgers. The doors of the smoker fill the back of the kitchen. When they open, they reveal a full company of smoking meats. I was so entranced by the huge stack of ribs tha...
1 comment
Read more

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

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...
2 comments
Read more