Doughnuts – Stab my Eyeball with a Fork, then Eat it

October 27, 2010 at 12:04 pm | Posted in Breads, Daring Bakers, Dessert, Jams/Jellies | 78 Comments
Tags: Chocolate, Daring Bakers, Donut Holes, Donuts, Doughnut Eyeballs, Doughnut Holes, Doughnuts, Glazed doughnuts, Halloween, Strawberrry Jam

I’m going to start this off with a blunt comment.  I don’t flip over doughnuts. I never did.  In fact, doughnuts are probably at the bottom of my sweet tooth list when I’m craving something sugary.  However, I do prefer cakey doughnuts to yeasty doughnuts and I will eat them if there’s absolutely nothing else sweet to eat and I must have a dose of sugar.  OK, there is a loophole here – Krispy Kreme doughnuts fresh out of the fryer back in the day.  This is because they were moist, eggy, sugary. creamy…sort of like biting into creme brulee.

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Since I’m not a huge doughnut fan, I decided to take this month’s challenge, half the recipe, and make doughnut holes…aka munchkins, aka poppers.  Since Halloween is upon us, I also decided to take these holes in a ghoulish direction.  I’d seen doughnut eyeballs all over the net for quite some time, but I could tell the flavor wasn’t spectacular since 1) They call for store bought doughnut holes, the boxed kind.  No doubt you can get your doughnut holes at one of the doughnut chains, but still, everything tastes better when it’s homemade and not sitting in a case for hours; 2) They dip the eyeballs in melted white chocolate.  Don’t get me wrong, I love white chocolate – but, come on, a doughnut isn’t a truffle – it just seems like complete overkill as far as sweetness and texture go..and 3) NO FILLING.  As if I can’t reiterate it enough, I don’t flip over doughnuts, but if I’m going to eat one..unless it’s a hot, melty ‘just out of the fryer’, glazed creme brulee yum – I need me some filling!

So..as you can see I turned my doughnut holes into eyeballs. but not just any eyeballs, bleeding eyeballs, and not just bleeding eyeballs, but eyeballs that are bleeding because they’ve been stabbed with a fork – which is a great way to serve them, especially considering they have such a bloody interior, and this blood is definitely not viscous.  That wouldn’t be any fun, would it?  The question is, do eyeballs actually bleed?  Well, I have yet to cut open or stab an eyeball, and most definitely don’t think I ever will..so leaving it up to one’s imagination and upping the gross factor, is not a bad thing come Halloween.  UPDATE:  According to Claire of Cooking is Medicine, an actual MD, eyeballs do in fact bleed, but nowhere near as much as my gory doughnut holes.

Having said all that, and now that I have my Halloween doughnut eyeball idea all ready to go, here’s what I did to make them taste better than the store bought white chocolate covered eyeballs.  Naturally, these doughnut holes are homemade.  Unfortunately, no cool frying photos.  As some of you know, I practically live in a forest so I have almost zero natural light.  I have windows, but with all the brush, not much sunlight gets in.  Well, I have NO windows in my kitchen – just a little window on the door.  Whenever I take ‘food in pot’ photos, I literally take the pot off stove and bring it to my sad, little Lowel Ego light nook to photograph it, then back to the stove.  With hot oil, no way, and not only for safety reasons – greasy reasons too.  Letting the dough sit in the oil that’s cooling down is NOT a good thing – don’t think I have to explain any further.  I did it once before with my cannoli challenge, and those shells were greasier than Zorro’s headband. 

OK, back to the task at hand.  I chose the yeast doughnut provided to us by our lovely hostess, Lori.  Why the yeast doughnut when I clearly stated I like the cakey doughnuts better, you ask?  Because a yeast risen doughnut will take more filling than a cake doughnut, and I wanted these babies to bleeeeeed.  I filled each doughnut hole with loads of bloood, welll, errr, really good strawberry jam with a little red gel paste added to really get a nice, bloody, red hue.  I nixed the white chocolate coating for the ever so awesome confectioners sugar glaze, double dipped to get it as white as I could.  I do love, love, love a nice translucent coating of glaze.  Finally, we DO have some chocolate, white chocolate tinted blue for the iris, white chocolate tinted red for the bloody, oozy veins, and dark chocolate for the pupil.  I have to say, they taste pretty good, and that’s a huge statement from me, the occasional doughnut nazi.

Well, that’s all folks, and who knows, maybe this challenge has converted me as far as doughnuts go, but they definitely have to be homemade and fresh, so I think I’ll try it again in the near future.   For some fingerlicious Halloween ideas, click HERE.  For the recipes for yeast and cake doughnuts, Click HERE, and as always, please click on the links HERE to see the gorgeous and amazing flavors, glazes and what have you.. my fellow Daring Bakers came up with for their doughnuts.  Have a safe, happy and ghoulish Halloween!  Oh, try to refrain from stabbing any eyeballs – unless they’re doughnuts.

OOOOPs, forgot to mention, I’m submitting these ghoulicious donut holes to Susan’s weekly bread baking showcase, Yeastspotting.