Cider doughnuts so good, they warrant a second posting

So in a fit of online self-congratulation for a near perfect execution of cider doughnuts yesterday morning, I promised our FB peeps that I’d finally break my long blog silence and post the recipe.

Later, as I was enjoying my second cup of coffee, and slowly recovering from the previous nights escapades in wine and ABBA (if that sounds fun, it is: but I caution you on mixing the two), I began to have an inkling of a memory of posting this recipe once before. Almost exactly a year, ago, in fact.

I wish I had remembered that I had already developed a cider doughnut recipe, when, 3 weeks ago, I started developing a cider doughnut recipe. You know what I’m saying? Anyhoo, this latest version is much like last year’s (nothing like re-inventing the wheel), with just a few little changes. The changes, I think, warrant this second posting. The resulting pastry is dark and crunchy on the outside, and soft, buttery and apple-y fragrant on the inside. But if you can’t find boiled cider (read a great article on boiled cider here), and don’t have any apple sauce on hand, the recipe from last year will stand in as an almost-as-delicious substitute.

Apple Cider Doughnuts, redux

1 cup sugar (I use organic evaporated cane juice)

2 eggs

1/2 cup boiled cider

3/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 tablespoons butter, melted

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

3-3/4 to 4 cups flour

Roughly 6 cups vegetable oil for frying (I use safflower oil)

About a cup of superfine sugar

Method:

With an electric beater, the paddle attachment of your stand mixer, or by hand, beat together 1 cup sugar and the eggs until the mixture is light in color.

In a medium size bowl (or a large measuring cup), mix together the boiled cider, apple sauce and the baking soda. Don’t let all that foaming and frothing worry you. That’s just the baking soda reacting to the acid in the apples. Beat this mixture into the sugar and eggs.

Next, stir in the melted butter, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and vanilla. Finally, add 3-3/4 cups of flour and mix just until the batter is combined. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

When you’re ready to fry the doughnuts, heat the oil in a large cast iron pot to 375 degrees. While the oil is heating, turn your chilled batter out onto a well-floured countertop and pat or roll the batter to about 1/2-inch thickness. Cut as many doughnuts as possible with a 2-inch doughnut cutter. Scrape the scraps together gently, re-roll and cut one more time.

When the oil has reached the correct temperature, fry the doughnuts, a few minutes on each side, until they turn a burnished golden brown. Remove them to a cookie sheet lined thickly with paper towels and allow to drain.

Mix about a cup of superfine sugar and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon in a paper lunch bag. Before the fried doughnuts are completely cool, toss a few at a time into the bag, and shake to coat.

It’s a Schmoolie!

After the Boston Globe ran a very nice story on BDC last Wednesday (haven’t read it? Click here), I’ve had many requests for the recipe for our Schmoolie that author Amy Sutherland mentioned in her article. And here I thought that everyone would be thrilled with the Banana-Coconut Chocolate Swirl Bread from my upcoming cookbook. Wrongo!

So, here it is: in all it’s delicious, humble, bundled up glory.

Schmoolie

3-1/4 cups flour

2 tsp. instant yeast

1-1/2 tsp. salt

3 tbsp. sugar

4 tbsp. butter, melted

1-1/4 cups milk, warmed slightly

3 roasted red peppers (I use the kind that come in a jar), diced

8 oz. feta cheese, crumbled

1 14-oz can quartered artichoke hearts

1/4 cup pitted kalamata olives, chopped

a handful of parsley, chopped

3 or 4 green onions, sliced

Combine the flour, yeast, salt, butter, sugar and milk in the bowl of a stand mixer and knead with the dough hook for 10 minutes. Add more flour as necessary to create a soft, elastic bread dough. (You can also do this by hand, of course.) When done kneading, form the dough into a ball, and place it in a greased bowl. Cover the bowl with some plastic wrap or a towel and allow the dough to rise for an hour, or until it is doubled in size.

While the dough is rising, combine the roasted red peppers, feta cheese, artichoke hearts, olives, parsley and green onions in a medium size bowl. Set aside.

When the bread dough is ready, heat your oven to 350 degrees. Remove the dough from the bowl and, on a lightly floured board, roll it out into roughly an 11″x18″ rectangle. Cut this rectangle into 8 smaller rectangles by cutting the dough in half, lengthwise; and then quartering each half.

Place about 1/4 cup of filling onto the center of each little rectangle. Use up all the filling.

Next, fold the corners of a rectangle of dough up over the filling; then the sides, and pinch together the edges to adhere. I always imagine that I am making a hobo bundle. Repeat this with each dough rectangle.

Place the bundles on an 11″x18″ cookie sheet, and pop them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes, or until the dough is golden and puffed. Serve them immediately, or, pop one in your pocket and go for a long hike. Schmoolies taste best when eaten under a tree, streamside, in the middle of a mossy island woods.

Home is where you hang your mug

The very first dwelling that Steve and I shared as a couple was a 1981 Volkswagen van.  It was October in Santa Cruz,  and I was in the middle of writing my senior thesis for my college graduation requirement while moonlighting full-time as a waitress at a downtown breakfast and lunch joint.  Steve was in the throes of a troublesome business partnership, managing a busy computer retail and repair store.

It was the late 90′s, and Santa Cruz was–like much of California–experiencing the great housing boom of the 20th century.  House purchases and rentals, alike, were completely unaffordable for young couples like us (though, in retrospect, we probably could have gotten a bank to give us a loan, but we never even entertained the idea.  I was barely 25, a student and a waitress; the thought of purchasing a half-a-million dollar house?  I mean it was beyond ridiculous.).   Our communal living situation had just dissolved, and though we had managed to secure a rental (a sweet, not-far-from-downtown two bedroom for $1350/month), the timing was just a wee bit off.

So, the Volkswagen was a month-long interim living situation while we waited to occupy our house.  We had a dog each, and little practice at co-habitation in such close quarters (who does?).  Let’s just say, it was an inauspicious start to our life together.

The plan, at least as much as there was one, was to spend the week nights in a campground in the mountains just above town, and then take full advantage of our mobility by exploring the rest of the coast on the weekends.  We began in earnest; I even purchased two coffee cups and a small french press for the van–our very first dishes.  And we did manage a couple of out of town trips during the month.  However, most nights we were both so exhausted from our respective work days, that we ended up bunking down in the parking lot behind Steve’s downtown computer store.

Strangely enough, despite what turned out to be an undesirable living situation, I found that there was one thing that made the van feel like home.  The coffee.  Every morning, Steve and I shared a pot from our French press, in our two newly acquired mugs, and it magically made everything, well, normal.

The month-long experiment finally ended when we let ourselves into our dark house on Halloween night, laid down on the living room floor with our dogs, and listened for hours as costumed revelers passed our unlit porch by.  The next morning, we got up, retrieved the French press and the mugs from the van, and made coffee in our empty kitchen.  Even before we poured the thick hot brew into our mugs, the scent of the coffee alone had magically transformed the empty house into a home.

Since those first weeks of co-habitation, together Steve and I have rented two houses, slept on a many a friendly couch/floor/spare bedroom, spent six months on the road in a leaky camper, and bought a home.  The mugs and the press pot travelled wherever we did.  They moved from California to Maine, mainland to the island.

A few months ago, we exchanged a certain amount of money for the deed to the house we have occupied and run our business out of for almost 5 years.  Ownership is a funny thing.  The place, of course, was home the first time we made coffee here.  And then home to countless other people who enjoy a cup in our attached cafe.  But after returning from Portland in late January, it feels different.  A kind of responsibility that extends beyond paying a mortgage every month.  A responsibility as home-owners to care for the house in a way that celebrates our values.  To live in and around our home with respect to our neighbors and our community–our communities here on the island and in the big wide world.  How will we move through this world?  How will we negotiate the differing landscapes of island and mainland? Will we choose to live isolated?  Or will we welcome and work for the fact that we are part of a larger whole?  It is a new and challenging and wonderful adventure.  And I look forward to telling you about it…over a cup of coffee.

Cider, pumpkins and the final week of the season

The last of the good stuff: Cafe cider doughnuts

It is not unusual for me to go all summer without eating a single morsel of my own baking.  But the last two weeks of the cafe season comes, and I’m like a bear getting ready for the starvation of hibernation: I totally pig out.

My latest weakness?  The fleeting decadence of New England cider doughnuts.  Theses babies are great consolation for having to keep the cafe open through Columbus Day weekend.  It’s painfully quiet around the island right now.  Our cafe workers have left for the season; Amy is off to New Zealand, and Sarena is has just begun her first year of college in Vermont.  The schooners have sailed into their home ports for the winter, and so have stopped their very welcome shore trips to the cafe.  The violent remnants of southern hurricanes, followed by the sudden drop in temperatures, have chased off day-trippers and would-be campers.  And the Sunday mailboat service has stopped for the season, making Sundays feel like, well, Sundays, minus the newspaper delivery.

All this adds up to a trickle of cafe business, leaving lots of time to plan the winter, catch up on my much ignored bookkeeping, bake-off apples and pumpkins for the seasonal batches of our Northern Apple and New England Pie Pumpkin truffles, and contemplate an entire counter  full of fresh pastries.  There are only so many tasks to keep me away from my own cooking, and since there is just one short week left of temptation, I have gleefully surrendered to the cider doughnuts.  Great with coffee and bill paying.

Cafe Cider Doughnuts

Ingredients for batter:

• 2 eggs
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 t. baking soda dissolved in 1 c. fresh apple cider
• 3 T. melted butter
• 1 T. vanilla extract
• 1 t. baking powder
• 4 c. flour
• 1/4 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. nutmeg
• Roughly 6 c. vegetable oil for frying (I use safflower)

Ingredients for glaze:

• 2 c. confectioner’s sugar
• 1/4 c. cider
• 1/2 t. vanilla

Method:

Beat together eggs and sugar until light.  Beat in the cider/soda, butter and vanilla.  Add baking powder, flour and spices all at once.  Place this loose batter in the refrigerator (or freezer if you’re in a hurry), bowl and all, until it firms up a bit.

Meanwhile, heat your oil  in a deep cast iron kettle.  Keep a close eye on the temperature.*  When it reaches 290 degrees, take out your batter and pat it out onto a well-floured board.  cut as many doughnuts as possible with a 2-inch doughnut cutter.  Check the temperature of your oil again, and when it reaches 375 degrees, start frying doughnuts in batches, flipping once.  Remove the doughnuts with tongs from the oil, and drain on paper towels.  The doughnuts should take only a few minutes to cook, but you might have to check one from your first batch to make sure it’s cooked completely through.  Make sure the oil returns to 375 degrees before you plop in the next batch of doughnuts.

Scrape together and re-pat (or roll)  and cut the dough once more.  After than, you may roll any remaining dough into ropes and form doughnuts that way.

While the doughnuts cool, make the glaze by stirring together all ingredients in a medium size bowl until completely smooth.

When doughnuts are cool enough to handle, dip one side into the bowl of glaze, and allow them to crystallize on a cooling rack.  Best served warm, but the other day, my neighbors gave me 3 lobsters from their day’s haul for the day-olds.   Hope you’re so lucky!

*Note: In deep frying, the right temperature makes the difference between the sickening and the sublime.  Do take the temperature of your oil.  For super accurate results (and more fun in the kitchen), I use an $80 refractometer (purchased from Chef Rubber), which gives me an instant surface temperature read on everything from oil to ganache to caramel.  Arguably, the best thing about this handy little tool, is the fact that you need never stir around a clunky candy thermometer again.  Oh no wait: the BEST thing about this tool is taking the surface temperature of everything in sight.  I’ve always said, there’s a little OCD in all of us.