Authentic Cooking Experiments: Donuts, Churros & Zeppoles ~ Sip, Savor & Sample

The other day while at the gym on the elliptical I watched a whole show devoted to the art of making donuts. As the clip of warm donuts at Krispy Kreme went through the sugar glaze fountain I suddenly had a craving for these airy delights. So instead of taking the easy route and heading to the neared store, I decided to take a go at making it at home. To further complicate this task, I decided since most ingredients overlapped, why not do churros and zeppoles along with it. Big mistake, but more on that later. As with most food, a quick search on goggle produced an overwhelming number of results. However on something like this, I decided to stick to the ones by chefs which I have come to trust. For the donuts I went with Alton Brown's Yeast donut recipe, the churros were from Rick Bayless and the Zeppoles from Batali. All three recipes are listed below for your convenience. The zeppoles required the most work ahead of time as the dough needed to be refridgated for at least 8 hours, so this was definitely not a recipes to make spur of the moment. However once the dough is cooled, the actual cutting and frying process is a breeze. On the other hand the churro recipe took all of 5 minutes hands on time with another 10-15mins required for the cooling of the dough. When ready to cook, I stuffed it into a cookie press and squeezed it directly into the hot oil.The most time consuming of the three was hands down the donuts. I now understand why the old dunkin donut slogan showed a man up at 4am saying "It's time to make the donuts". Not only does the dough needed to rest twice, but once cut it was extremely soft and delicate to work with. The actual cooking process was rather easy as I headed my deep fryer to 375 and slowly dropped them in. After about 2-3 minutes on each side the resulting donut poofed up and turned a beautiful golden color, much resembling those of Dunkin and Krispy Kreme. After they were dipped in the glazed frosting it was finally time to sample these treats.

The verdict? The glazed donuts were pretty good and tasted as they looked, light and fluffy. The churro was my second favorite as they were slightly crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. It was finished off with a sugar cinnamon rub before being served with hot chocolate dipping sauce. My least favorite was the zeppoles which due to the instant polenta gave it a griddy texture. Though not extremely horrible I found it unpleasant in a dessert dish. However the texture can be mitigated slightly when served with a butterscotch sauce and hints of cranberry jam.

All in all another interesting and great learning experiment, however to tackle all three in one shot was definitely more than a little aggressive and took way longer than expected! In the end we ended up with enough fried dough desserts to last a while.