These were not the prettiest gals at the party, it's true, but you'll have to accept my most solemn assurances that these bastards tasted exactly like delicious Krispy Kremes, sans the god-knows-what's-in-those-anyway.
The recipe came from
My Sweet Vegan, a book I haven't totally delved into due to laziness, and let me tell you, good people. This was an all-afternoon project. But worth it!
First, you whip up the dough (it's a yeasted dough, so the recipe has you "proof" it first, which I half-assed-ly did) in your handy stand mixer.
After you do the deed and mix, then knead it all together (all in the stand mixer = I love you, stand mixer), you pat it into a ball and place it in a lightly greased bowl. Leave it in a warm, un-drafty place to rise for approximately an hour...
...until it's doubled in size. Crazy!
Next, you roll it out, cut your doughnut shapes (I used a jelly glass, and the piping attachment of a pastry bag to make the little hole. I'm resourceful!), and set them on a lightly greased cookie sheet and leave them, loosely covered in a warm place to rise again for approximately an hour.
Same deal as before. They're gonna get huge!
Next is when the magic happens. Deep-frying time! Conveniently for me, the bf arrived home from a trip out of town at this point, which was great because I fear and dislike the act of deep-frying, while he excels at this skill. After setting down his bags and quickly suiting up in his go-to deep-frying outfit (duh, shades and an undershirt), we got down to business.
Now, this here's a candy thermometer. I do NOT recommend using one for gauging the oil temperature (which the recipe says should be 350 degrees, and which we found to be waaaay too hot), because it's really meant for helping you caramelize sugar and make candy, which is a whole different animal. Still, we couldn't find our meat thermometer, so this had to do. It kind of screwed us over at first by totally not getting the temperature right. Fortunately, the bf used his deep-frying sixth sense to figure out when the oil was good to go, and that did us just fine.
Meanwhile, I was on delicious sugar glaze duty. The doughnuts were good on their own - not too sweet - but I think the glaze (melted Earth Balance, water, vanilla, whole mess of powdered sugar) is really what brought them to a Krispy Kreme level of success.
It was a fry, blot, glaze, dry kind of affair. Here's where they went to cool and dry.
Here's the finished product:
Like I said, they're no lookers, but they tasted awesome. These will definitely be happening again, although probably not until the next Fat Tuesday rolls around!
