The best laid plans...

Well, I tried to make some home made donuts this weekend. Unfortunately the oil wasn't hot enough and so they turned into oil soaked rings. I decided that the neighborhood squirrels aren't fat enough yet, so I played find the donuts with them, and broke a few up and put them on the bird feeders, where the squirrels can't get to. With all that oil in them, those critters ought to get nice and fat.

As a consolation, I made up some of Great Grandma Lindgren's swedish hard tack (an authentic recipe I got from my step-dad's family, who are swedish descendents). It is irresistable, and I share with y'all here. I improved on the original a little. Enjoy.

Big Ben’s Swedish Hard Tack


2 c all purpose flour
1 c rye flour
¼ c sugar
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup butter or margarine or butter flavor crisco
1 c buttermilk
2 tbsp fennel seed
2 tbsp caraway seed


In a medium bowl, blend flour, sugar, salt and soda. Cut in margarine until
mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in buttermilk and add fennel and caraway seeds
using a big wooden spoon. With floured hands, shape into ½” patties and
roll on floured board to make very thin oblong sheets that will fit on the cookie sheet. Bake on ungreased sheets at 450 deg F for fifteen minutes or until light to medium brown. A special fine checkered rolling pin can be used to give the sheets some texture, or you can roll them smooth and add texture by lightly pricking the surface with a fork all over. Serve with room temperature butter or margarine and/or slices of sharp cheddar cheese. Makes 5 or 6 sheets.

So, what are your plans for the critters once they get nice and fat???

"So, what are your plans for the critters once they get nice and fat???"

Eating them with hard tack! Fatter is juicier. Hard tack is dry.

Sue

"...plain country biscuits sold in the tube..."

How do you put the hole in them???

How would Blast do it? One deer slug through several dozen donuts?

Nah, deer slugs are for deer.
7.62x54R AP rounds are for dounut making.

Mosin-Nagant: when you absolutly, positively need to put a hole through something.

-Blast

Like pesky cats!

<just kiddin'!!>

LOL, I gotta think shooting a tin of biscuit dough end to end with a russian round would turn the whole can wrong side out.

My problem was the oil never got quite hot enough, and I got impatient.

As for the squirrels, I ain't decided on them yet. I might use them as bait for hunting coyotes. Live trap them, take them up to the hills with me, and stake them out in the middle of a field and start calling.

Using live bait, for hunting, is illegal in most areas isn't it?

What did the coyotes do to deserve such treatment?


John E.

Used to use an empty pill bottle as a cookie cutter, then fry the holes along with the donuts. AuntGoo says I'm not old enough(safe enough) to play with boiling oil anymore...

[quote=IzzyJG99Hole donuts have less donut to eat.[/quote]

Yeah, but the larger surface area means MUCH more powdered sugar on it! Yeah!!!

We always just used our hands to poke holes in the buscuit dough.


Is there a standard test to determine if the oil is hot enough?

A thermometer works decently enough.

Fry a test doughnut to see.

"Is there a standard test to determine if the oil is hot enough?"

A thermometer that clips to the side of the pot is what you want. OR a reliable electric frying pan that you can set to the required temp. The magic number is 375F. Only add two or three doughnuts to the hot oil at a time ... too many will cool it down and you'll get greasy squirrel doughnuts*.

Frying doughnuts can be a bit tricky... by the time the center is cooked, the outside is overcooked, thus the reason for donut holes. Besides, it's been scientifically proven that there are no calories in doughnut holes, no matter how much powdered sugar you put on them.

* Always cook squirrels separately.

Sue

Yep, it seems I was a bit too ambitious and plopped too many into the oil at one time, and the electric fry pan couldn't keep up (I'm not sure it got hot enough to begin with, I used a candy thermometer and it never got above 325 degrees, even before I plopped).

I think I am going to switch to a heavy cast iron pot and a propane burner and see if I can't get the oil up in temp. Either that or maybe go for a real deep fryer unit. I don't know as we will eat that many donuts to justify that sorta cash outlay.

Benjammin, if I got a real deep fryer, I'd end up making 'way more donuts than before - to amortize the cost of the unit!

Well, it's not just doughnuts that would bennefit from a dedicated frying unit. Think of all the squirrel.

Donuts = Krispy Kreme or Tim Horton's!

We used a bottlecap to punch out the doughnut holes when we made them from canned biscuits with my mom. Good times....

Here's the deal, and maybe I've stumbled onto something here; my wife can't take eating sugar in anything more than about 5grams per 8 to 12 oz serving. Unfortunately, the mainstream doesn't cater to her limitations, so often when we go somewhere, she has to do without. I have learned to use Splenda in place of sugar in many recipes, but hadn't tried donuts yet.

The lightbulb pops on...

Given how well certain other businesses are doing selling sugar based pastries and confections, and the apparent lack of market support for sugar free or no sugar added products, perhaps someone of resource might consider marketing said products. Imagine, a donut that is as good as a Crispy Creme, yet little to no sugar. Okay, you'd still have to inject it full of fat, but then you have Big Ben's squirrel donuts again, so I'd just have to switch to lard instead of canola oil to low temp fry my essentially sugar free donuts in.

Now, I've perfected a fudge recipe, a muffin recipe, various cake and pie recipes, and a few cookie recipes. I even have a darned good and authentic sugarfree flan recipe, that also happens to be lowfat, but we won't discuss that just yet.

Or maybe we will. Maybe it's time that the consumer is finally ready to consider some low fat, low sugar renditions of their favorite consumables. What do ya think? If I could come up with a really close knock-off, would it be worth a little extra to get something a little healthier? I could even up the soluble fiber content in a lot of things without altering the taste/texture in most cases.

Would a 10 to 15% increase in cost be small enough to be acceptable?

I've asked this question too... just never really cared to figure the answer. Like, for instance, all those "healthy" options in the hospital cafeteria - fried, full of sugar, etc. Bakeries.. why are they even using sugar anymore?? American obesity is so rampant, you think they'd just switch over and not say anything... or sam something and get more business!

If you pursue it Benjamin, best of luck! I'll be happy to eat any horrible mistakes, in the bakery department.

Do the research on Aspartame and you'll discover why Sugar is still in high demand.

The medical evidence is very scary and aspartame was approved through certain political manuevers that benefitted the movers greatly!!!

Do the research,,,,I guarantee that you won't like the information that you find!!!

Weird thing is, I've heard Fidel Castro liked nothing better than to relax with a diet coke and listen to his favorite Nancy Sinatra track, 'These boots are made for Walking'...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OU7Nezg7Ls

Yeah, I have given up on Aspartame, but Splenda seems to be an acceptable alternative. It is still sugar, but in a form humans can't assimilate. One thing I've noticed about using Splenda in baked goods, especially pies, is that it tends to produce mold quicker than regular sugar.

Splenda doesn't seem to have as strong an aftertaste or off taste as other sweeteners seem to, at least for most of the people I talk to. Personally, I have no problem with consuming sugar, but for those who have a sweet tooth and health problems associated with diet, Splenda seems the best alternative. If it means the difference between getting used to an unfamiliar taste vs. having to stick a needle in my belly every day, I know which way I would prefer to go.

By the way, I love how every manufacturer of a different sugar alternative villifies all other products while touting their own. One thing they all claim is that the FDA does not test the products of other substitutes well enough or otherwise discounts the hazards before approving it for the market, yet somehow theirs is the only safe one that's been fully tested and that the FDA got right??? Based on these claims, nothing the FDA tests and subsequently approves for general consumption is any good. Ridiculous hype! The same holds true for health professionals. Once they decide which product they like, all the rest are unsafe. There must be hundreds of doctors writing thousands of papers on the adverse health effects of consuming every known sweetener, from table sugar to tagatose, except the one they recommend.

Gimme a stinking break.

I would like to see more low sugar/fat products but it seems that by the time an industrial kitchen gets a hold of most of them, they end up tasting like sweetened cardboard. I'd like to see your flan receipe. I've been tasked with desserts for Thanksgiving and it might be a good idea for that (alongside traditional dessert offerings).

Spenda is not a sugar, its chemical name is 1,6-Dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-a lpha-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-a lpha-D-galactopyranoside

Spenda, is in fact a chlorinated hydrocarbon and in the organic chemistry sense is more closely related to a group of toxic compounds used mainly as refrigerants, industrial solvents, and dry cleaning fluids, i.e PCBs and formerly as anesthetics rather than simple carbohydrates.

At least this chemical wasn't a product of the CIAs MK ULTRA project (mind control, drug and chemical warfare) unlike Aspartame.

Gota love those marketing men though. Again.

The long term human use and environmentally impact issues are really quite unknown (Splenda does not occour naturally, a bit like Plutonium), and MR MK ULTRA himself probably sums it up quite well.

You're right about the Splenda,,,,it's no better than the Aspartame.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

You are right, again!!!!

Oh no, big scary sounding chemicals names! They must be toxic! Run! Save yourselves! &#945;-D-glucopyranosyl-(1&#8596;2)-&#946;-D-fructofuranoside will kill you. 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione was found in orange juice! Millions will overdose on(S)-2-Amino-3-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-propanoic acid in two weeks!

Oh wait, &#945;-D-glucopyranosyl-(1&#8596;2)-&#946;-D-fructofuranoside is just the chemical name for sucrose, one of the many sugars out there. Personally I'm glad orange juice has vitamin C. Mmmm, Thanksgiving turkeys are loaded with the amino acid tyrosine...

Splenda is just a sucrose (sugar!) molecule with three chlorine atoms replacing three hydroxyl radicals. Saying it is closer to PCB's than sugar is either dishonest or ignorant science. It's like saying a car and a telephone booth are identical because they both contain glass panels.
PCB, refridgerants and other chlorinated solvents have completely different molecular structures than sugar.

Am_Fear, this isn't a personal attack against you. I'm just sick of people being scared by science.

-Blast

Or, you could just stick with sugar in, you know, moderation. It's one thing to sweat it if you're diabetic, but it's another to declare it public enemy #1.

The last campout I took the girls on they were very impressed with my "camp doughnut" (fried tube biscuits) making skills. I used the little white cap from the propane bottle to punch the holes in the dough. Isn't that why they provide that cap?

Replacing the 3 hydroxyl groups with chlorine, has turned the raffinose molecule (a sugar molecule) into a chlorinated hydrocarbon molecule or a Organochloride . The transformed molecule is now not a sugar of any chemical description. By definition the addition of the 3 chlorine atoms now ensures that the so called 'Sucralose' molecule (which by its own name is a misnomer, in fact the name 'Sucralose' is in fact a scientifically fraudulent name as it does not conform to any organic chemists idea for a naming convention) is not a sugar, a sugar being a sub grouping of carbohydrate molecules, as carbohydrates by definition only contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms and most definitely not any chlorine atoms. So by this very fact the so called 'Sucralose' molecule is a chlorinated hydrocarbon molecule and is most definitely not a sugar.

http://www.truthaboutsplenda.com/factvsfiction/index.html

The addition of the chlorine atoms is not a trivial matter, as you are most probably aware even identical molecules which just vary slighty in their structure through mirror image isomerism can be devistating to human growth and health.

From www.americanchemistry.com:

"Chlorine chemistry is essential to more than 93 percent of prescription pharmaceuticals sold in the U.S. These include critical drugs used to treat high cholesterol, stomach ulcers, anemia, cancer, epilepsy and depression. For U.S. and Canadian consumers, the total benefit of chlorine chemistry in pharmaceuticals is estimated to be $450 billion per year."

Being an organochloride does not automatically make it bad.

*sigh*

Nevermind. I'm sure going back to the caves will work out fine.

-Blast

If there's a Kroger's grocery near you, try their no sugar added ice cream. I've had regular butter pecan that comes off second best to it.

"Spenda is not a sugar, its chemical name is 1,6-Dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-a lpha-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-a lpha-D-galactopyranoside"

- Mmmmm, yummy!

My mom was a pioneer in reducing calorie count in everyday foods-Cornell home economics major, and quite adventurous. She created a dietetic mayonnaise in the '50's-substituted mineral oil for the olive oil when she made it. Served it to the bridge club with her popular tomato aspic. The ladies liked it all too well, and came down with the runs shortly thereafter, since mineral oil isn't meatbolized, but passes-quite promptly-through the gut. The old man's favorite recommendation for dog cough syrup was a tablespoon of mineral oil-"they'll be afraid to cough!"

Doughnuts without holes are beignet. Laissez les bon temps roulez.

I don't get it.

All these companies make all these low- or no-calorie sweeteners to help Americans lose weight, or to keep it off, right?

Then why is most of the corn grown in the U.S. genetically modified, and most the non-animal-feed corn turned into high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is added to nearly every processed food we eat?

Here's a small part of a very long list of foods that contain HFCS:
Stove Top Stuffing Mix
Most soft drinks
Fruit drinks of all kinds
Darigold Chocolate milk
Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice & Sauce
Sara Lee Healthy Whole-Grain Bread
Thomas English Muffins
Wonderbread
Virtually every product Kellogg makes
Lifesaver candies
Heinz Catsup
Miracle Whip salad dressings
Most of Nabisco's products
All the NutriGrain bars
Quite a few cough syrups & cold remedies
Breyer's yogurt
Yoplait yogurts
Claussen pickles
Mott's Applesauce
Ben & Jerry's ice creams
Dreyer's ice creams
Knott's Berry Farm jams
Smuckers jams and jellies
A1 Steak Sauce
Bull's Eye BBQ sauces
Oscar Meyer's Lunchables
Ragu and Prego spaghetti sauces

I guess you wouldn't want me to get started on HFCS in fast foods, right?

Read the labels, and don't stop at the first sweetener you see. You will find that HFCS is in far more foods than it isn't.

Just in case you're still one of the people who use real sugar, apparently 2008 is the first year that sugar made from genetically- modified sugar beets hit the markets for the general consumer. WHOOPDEEDOO! If this bothers you, stick to cane sugar. At least, for now.

And, just for fun, I'll tell you that the company who sells you Aspartame, and the company who owns most of the genetically-modified seed in the U.S. are one and the same, Monsanto. I guess they'll get you, one way or another.

Sue

Hi Sue,



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEbRxTOyGf0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVsgXPt564Q



Er, would that be obesity and the complications that arise from Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.

I guess you wouldn't have been stuck for words.

HFCS is the result of politicians being bought. How bout them cheap sugar imports? What, tarrifs? How bout them HFCS?

Look, it's like this, if you cannot tolerate the consumption of any digestible sugar in anything but a trace amount, then either you give up sweets, or you find an alternative. Right now, there is no alternative to sugar that isn't somehow bad for you, I don't care which bandwagon you jump on, some "expert" with an MD or PhD at the end of their name will cite some study and quote some chemical analysis and tell you that whatever sugar substitute you are considering will kill you. I searched the internet for every type of sweetener I could think of, and someone somewhere has something bad to say about every single one of them.

From the laymen's perspective I have on organochemistry, I have come to the conclusion that Splenda seems to be the best one out there right now, with the least number of known or realistically suspected side-effects or hazards. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I am, then so is everyone else out there using a sugar substitute right now. Since we are on the subject, regular sugar doesn't seem to be doing any better, and I can't help but think that given the trend in our social dietetic scheme for the past 50 years, it's no wonder that diabetes has become an epidemic in this country. Personally, my preference is towards table syrup first off, because that's what my family was raised on, mainly due to the fact that it was the only sweetener available in the southwest for darned near 100 years (table syrup is more appropriately known here in the north as Sorghum syrup). My second preference is for honey, but I won't even bother going into all the hazards I've heard recently about eating that stuff.

Since my wife can't eat any sugar, regardless of the type or form, we must use an alternative. If not Splenda, then you pick one, and I will post a whole slew of links explaining how it is going to poison us and we would do better spraying it in our garden to control pests.

I'll tell you one thing for sure, those squirrels in our backyard certainly didn't seem to care one whit about the Splenda I used to ice and otherwise coat those donuts in. Three of them ate the whole dozen over the weekend, and guess what, they are back for more. Maybe I will run my own little experiment and keep making squirrel food through the winter and see what happens to them come springtime.

I'm curious if anyone has looked at "Stevia" type alternative? I've tried it some as a coffee/tea sweetener, since I blame aspartame based sweeteners for migranes (right or wrong, I don't know, but anything that could set of a migrane is to be avoided).

Anyway, the flavor is slightly different than surgar. I won't get into all of the controversy as to why it has to be an "herbal supplement" in the US. I bought mine at a local Trader Joe's. Can be used as a substitute for sugar in some baking/cooking, requiring much smaller amounts than sugar.

It would not have the same effect as sugar on your doughnuts, but for other sweetening needs it may or may not be of interest. Just a thought, YMMV.

My wife tried Stevia in a cheesecake and it came out looking like it had parsley flakes in it and didn't help the taste at all. it was probably not prepared properly.

Benjammin,I just watched Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie and I agree, there is lots of hazards to eating honey.