These doughnuts were not made by normal Hilary. No, rather, they were made by that possessed-with-patience Hilary that somehow sees spending hours making miniature doughnuts as a natural continuation of her post-workday Wednesday. Before you get all excited about making these, you must know that homemade doughnuts are truly a labour of love (a grade above the insanity it takes to make homemade perogies, even). At least six hours from start to finish, folks. Not all preparation time, I should say, but a rising time with the yeast dough that makes you feel as though you are watching Father Time play a game of bocce ball before engaging in a chess marathon. You have been warned.

Confession: these doughnuts involve a partial sneaky snarkiness. They are a tiny expression of distaste over my parents’ decision to go to Boston (one of my top three near-future dream trip destinations) this week and leaving me behind. Over the past two years, I have hypothetically planned enough Boston adventures of my own to be extremely jealous. In the meantime, I brought Boston home. Eat your heart out, beautiful city.

(I am quite positive my parents will be taking a picture of Boston cream pie for me, and perhaps I’ll paste that photo right here once they return)

AN ADVENTURE IN DEEP-FRYING
For those who don’t know, I played in a recreational baseball league this summer. This is only relevant because the story that follows took place at our final post-baseball game party at our coach Nat’s house. Remember Nat? She’s the one that’s starting Sudbury’s first gourmet food truck and has therefore propelled herself to the top of my Ultimate Cool Person list.

Anyways, this party was not your traditional beer-drinking and barbeque. Yes, the evening did involve both these things (perhaps a tad too much of one), but it also involved another aspect: deep fried food…items like risotto balls that Nat had hand-shaped into careful spheres and tossed in a panko bread crumb mixture to form an irresistible shell. The hot-oil treats didn’t stop there – soon we were deep frying two-bite brownies, strawberries, and cheese. It was gloriously indulgent and made us giggle.

What I’m getting at here is that I’ve had the urge to do my own deep frying ever since attending this party. I know that is the most diabetic desire ever, but I can’t help myself! Something about dropping things in hot oil and watching as the bubbles shoot out the sides just really gets me.

So these doughnuts were deep fried.

A few notes on that: it is probably not best to try deep frying things for the first time when you’re home alone and it is 12:55 a.m. It is especially not good when the person doing said deep frying has an irrationally large fear of oil-inflicted fires, a sense of alarm caused by too many university roommate mishaps and childhood hours watching Smokey Bear commercials.

Every afternoon our newsroom becomes a porous entity. People pass in and out of the station’s backdoor like it’s nobody’s business, all in pursuit of one thing: a mid-afternoon snack. That snack usually comes in the form of some bagged goodie bought at the Shopper’s Drug Mart across the street from the station (my co-workers and I are convinced that we are the most frequent visitors to this location and are upset that none of the cashiers remember us and say something like “oh yes, I do remember you! You do have an Optimum card!).

The afternoon snacking binge is normally initiated by a single person (this is an alternating role) and then, contagious as a yawn, we are all suddenly in need of Smart Food popcorn, hummus and carrots, seasoned peanuts and Licorice nibbs. The latter is my vice, and on a number of occasions I’ve found myself having inhaled the bag’s contents before even making it back to my desk.

So there…I am a reasonably healthy eater, but I am also an unhealthy snack fiend.

These brownies were inspired by the most recent of my Shopper’s Drug Mart trips in which, having previously managed to fend off the urge to purchase an expensive “Excellence” series Lindt chocolate bar, I finally gave in when my co-worker and friend Jen asked if I wanted to go splitsies on a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. We chose two of our favourites – the dark chocolate sea salt and the milk chocolate crunchy caramel bar – and proceeded to (or at least I did anyways) stuff our faces with a sickening amount of melt-in-your-mouth chocolate. This posed a problem. For anyone who has ever been required to speak into a microphone, you’ll know that eating dairy in any form is not a good idea before doing any sort of recording. This in mind, I had to drink about a gallon of water before I was able to voice my narration for the next day’s news piece. Radio reporting + copious amounts of chocolate = not an excellent combination, sadly.

The idea for these brownies didn’t fall too far from the tree, and are a wonderful marriage of that delicious caramel/sea salt/chocolate threesome. A special thank-you to my co-worker Erik who suggested this week’s dessert be something in square-form (inherently non-photogenic, but I tried).

These did the trick in keeping any afternoon Shopper’s Drug Mart trips at bay BUT did little to quell my daytime eating habits. I may have had five of these on Friday. That’s just how good they were.

Continue reading →