Okay, I feel a little silly posting about this, but my husband assures me that this will be of vital interest to the rest of human civilization, so here goes:
A couple of weeks ago, said hubby and I were sitting at a picnic table outside of the Historic Parshallville Grist/Cider Mill, taking in the lovely and quaint surroundings, the babbling of the brook beside us, the slight nip in the air of early Fall … and inhaling some pretty fabulous donuts along with our fresh-off-the-press cider. Still, there was no way we were going to eat the entire dozen donuts we had purchased, so we got to talking about what to do with the remainders. Of course, there’s always that old standby use for any stale bread-y baked good: bread pudding. But, as I said before, we were inhaling those donuts, and had gotten through about half of them already, so there wasn’t really enough left for a decent pudding. Then it occurred to us, well, what would you do if you just wanted to revive them? I was of the opinion that if you just microwaved them for 15-20 seconds, to heat them through and steam them a bit to de-stale them, then fried them briefly in a pan with a bit of oil to restore that bit of greasy crunch all really good cider-mill donuts have, you might be able to come out with something relatively close to a fresh donut.
Guess what? It actually worked!
Okay, so I’m not Christopher Kimball–it was still a fun experiment.
I fervently believe that this discovery ranks with the invention of the nacho in the history of snack food cuisine.
Mary and David,
I am so glad to hear that you enjoyed the trip to Parshallville’s Cider Mill. When my daughter was 9 and 10 we lived just over the river and a few hundred feet up the hill from the Cider Mill . . . so walking to the mill for a donut was a favorite after school snack adventure. Thanks for the tips on resurrecting the donuts. I will give it a try soon, since it is the season.
Zoe
Hi, Mary —
I’m the other Mary from tonight’s MLFB cookie exchange, and had to look up your blog after meeting you and hearing the great name! I once took day-old doughnut holes, dunked them in chocolate, then rolled them in toasted coconut, truffle-like. Better Homes & Gardens named it an “honorable mention” and paid me $250 for it, in their hand-held desserts contest! But really, who usually has leftover doughnuts???
Hi! The re-purposed doughnut holes sound really good–I may borrow that idea next Xmas. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t have leftover doughnuts either, but we get them by the dozen from the cider mill, and that’s a bit many for even my husband and I to scarf in one sitting (not that we haven’t tried…).