Baked Donuts

I love to cook, but baking is another animal entirely…one I'm a little scared of and who doesn't laugh at my jokes.

Justice Bear had a craving for donuts that was conflicting with his current healthy eating and working out plan so he asked me to bake him some vegan donuts. I found a recipe from VeganYumYum but since we are so not vegan and I like cooking with real foods, I opted to use fresh butter and eggs from the farmer's market rather than their vegan counterparts. I also used whole wheat flour rather than white. The result was pretty awesome actually and way below the calorie level of your usual donut.

Baked Donut Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 shake of cinnamon
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
4 tablespoons butter

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350º F.

In a large bowl whisk together all the dry ingredients.

Combine all the wet ingredients in a small sauce pan over medium low heat & mix until butter is melted.

When the wet ingredients are cool enough to stick your finger in them, add the wet ingredients to the dry & mix until combined and you have a soft spongy dough.

Using a spoon, scoop the dough into your donut pan, gently push it with your fingers to fill each space to just below the rim. This should make 6-8 regular donuts or 15-20 mini donuts.

Bake them for 12 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Flip the hot pan over a cooling rack to release the donuts & allow them to cool completely before decorating.

Decorating Donuts

I ate these guys pain as the cake is plenty sweet and delicious for me. But I also made chocolate glaze, apple cinnamon and sugar coated. For the chocolate glaze I heated some Tcho Dark Chocolate Disks and simply painted it on the cooled donuts. For the sugar coating I painted the cooled donuts with Agave Syrup and sprinkled them with raw sugar. The apple cinnamon ones were my favorite and first to go. I diced an apple and mixed the pieces with cinnamon & sugar in a bowl. Before baking, I filled each donut cup halfway with the apple mixture and topped it with the donut batter.

Heart Shaped Pizza Tuesday

AKA Valentine's Day 2012. Honestly, Justice Bear and I don't usually do Valentine's Day, but I do love an excuse to find a theme for dinner, especially when that dinner can be pizza-based.

A Guide to Seasonal Ingredients

Here is a really helpful guide to seasonal ingredients I found on Epicurious. Choose the month and your state and you get a list of seasonal fruits and vegetables. I love using seasonal ingredients because it forces me to explore foods I don't know what to do with!

With buying organic gaining popularity, larger corporations are jumping on the "organic" bandwagon. To me, the organic movement goes hand-in-hand with the local food movement and buying organic foods that are shipped halfway across the country rather defeats the original purpose behind the movement. 

Of course you don't need to worry about that or to use a chart like this if you buy from your local farmer's markets!