After one year and 104 recipes, I finished the Brooks Bakes Bread Project on March 27, 2012. You can still find me baking and cooking at my new blog, Tangled Up In Food.

Archives: 18 February 2012

Cake Doughnuts
February 18, 2012

by stacy
Published on: February 18, 2012
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Comments: 2 Comments

“These fried cakes, which originated in New England, have been overwhelmingly popular in the American diet.  Those of you who hark back to World War I will remember that the Salvation Army established itself in history with girls who carried doughnuts through to the trenches.  People gave money for doughnut machines so they could be turned out by the thousands for the troops.  Nowadays cake doughnuts are covered with chocolate and all kinds of icings, which are sometimes revolting.”
-James Beard, Beard on Bread

The recipe notes for Cake Doughnuts illustrate the two things that I absolutely love about James Beard’s books: how he provides cultural and historical context for the recipes, and how he is opinionated almost to the point of being a curmudgeon.  After my experiences with almost setting oil on fire and managing to adhere dough to wax paper, Cake Doughnuts were the final Fried Cakes section recipe.

Here are the ingredients:

Cake Doughnuts Ingredients

I halved the recipe, and substituted nutmeg for mace.

Last night, I mixed up my dough and left in refrigerator overnight to chill.  The dough was similar in texture to a sugar cookie dough (and like sugar cookie dough, tasted pretty good).

This morning I rolled out the dough to a thickness of 1/4 inch and used my doughnut cutter to cut out some doughnuts and holes.  Keeping in mind my previous frying experiences, I was very careful to maintain the oil temperature at 370 degrees and fried the holes for twice as long as the doughnuts to ensure that they baked all the way through.

I ended up with five very nice looking doughnuts:

Cake Doughnuts

and a corresponding number of holes:

Cake Doughnuts

Homemade Cake Doughnuts are delectable beyond anything you will find at the grocery store, or even Dunkin’ Doughnuts (and I say this as someone who would happily open the first Minnesota franchise).  The outside is cooked to a crisp perfection, with a soft, sweetened inside.  I think they’re wonderful plain; Mike frosted his with the maple glaze recipe from Maple Bars, and reports that the results were not revolting in the least.

Cake Doughnuts

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About the Baker
I'm a paralegal living and working in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. Besides baking, blogging, and eating bread, I love knitting and enjoying the Minnesota outdoors. My husband, Mike, is the Brooks Bakes Bread website developer, bread photographer, and chief taste tester.
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