When you're miles and miles away from a good doughnut...

No, they're not good for you, but every once in a while you just have to have a fresh ring of fried dough and a tall, cold glass of milk.  But when the closest doughnuts, mediocre at best, are a 30 minute drive one way and the really good ones are a little further, but cost an arm and a leg and there's a looming ice storm and blizzard and you MUST have them, you do what needs to be done.

You google doughnut recipes.

I am picky when it comes to doughnuts.  My favorite are chocolate cake doughnuts, moist but not greasy, with vanilla icing. I was out of baking cocoa, so those were out of the question.

Next in line for the crown are simple, plain, old fashioned glazed yeast doughnuts.  Now, I've never made doughnuts. I don't own a fryer, but I do have a large cast iron dutch oven.  My mouth watered at the prospect. So that was the plan, a vat of 350 degree oil on my gas stove.  That WAS the plan.  But when I dug out my clip-on thermometer, I discovered that it slid up and down in its mounting so what the actual temperature was at any given moment was anyone's guess.  Reeling in my disappointment, my wind whirled with other options.

The electric fry pan!  It wasn't very deep, but it did have an automatic thermostat, so that was good.  And if I was careful loading the pan and flipping the depth I could work around.

I scrolled through dozens of recipes to find one that wasn't overly complicated and for one that required ingredients I had on hand.

Bingo! Krispy Kreme Copycat from Genius Kitchen

The photos on the site aren't the best, as the doughnuts are over cooked.

I also used metal skewers to flip and lift the doughnuts. And I kept the glaze warm and after letting the glaze set, I dipped them again.

I used my 3 inch and 1 inch biscuit
cutting rings to form the doughnuts.
They looked rather sad.

Once they hit the oil, my worries were
over.  They puffed and filled out nicely.

Using a skewer for a quick flip.

Cooked to golden.

Draining on a cooling rack above a paper towel catch all.

Of course when you make doughnuts, you get doughnut ball!
I also made all the scraps into balls.

Glazed and ready to eat.

With the remaining scraps, I mixed apple, sugar and cinnamon
and pressed together and made apple fritters for Doc.