Snow Day Doughnuts

Man, I think we've had at least one snow day every week since January 3. And that is 100% not a complaint!

This particular snow day came at a good time. The last two days have been depression relapse days. Yesterday was so bad I actually just carried around a box of tissues. I'm hoping everyone just thought I had a bad cold. When I checked the snow closure line this morning, I was so relived to hear it was indeed a snow day.

I had planned on baking doughnuts this evening anyway as a nice Valentine's Day treat for me and John, so I just moved up the timeline from post-dinner to post-lunch. And I'm glad I did...that was a solid 2-hour project. My back is killing me. Hammy, as usual, was my shadow. He just loves palling around the kitchen with me while I toil. John is working from home today, but I heard him perk up when I the first pan was in the oven. "Oooh, I smell chocolate."

The original plan was to make one batch of the chocolate glazed chocolate doughnuts, but then while I was double checking on browning butter, I found the instructions I needed within a vanilla doughnut recipe, so I said, "Hell, I've got a crap ton of buttermilk to use, I'll do a batch of each!" And I did. And I still have a ton of buttermilk left...sigh. Looks like pancakes for breakfast on Sunday!

But how about we make some tiny tasty treats? (The doughnuts here are decidedly smaller than your average Dunkin-esque kind. Which is good, cuz I can eat two and feel slightly less guilty...cuz two small ones just equals one big one, right? Right.)

Meet Team Vanilla (though there's no vanilla in the mix yet).

And Team Chocolate.

I just had each recipe taped above each of the two bowls, and the common ingredients ready to grab in between the bowls. I had chocolate-specific ingredients on the far side of that bowl and the vanilla-specific ones to the far side of that bowl. It was a little confusing, but I just had to triple-check myself, and all was well.

A bad shot of the two teams.

To keep from cross-contaminating with flavors, I kept the two teams on opposite sides of the pan.

I have a problem, and I've yet to decide if it's good or bad: My name is Maureen, and I overfill muffin tins all the time. This was the first pan, and I, of course, overfilled them. They raised so much the vanilla ones kinda didn't have holes anymore. I was never good at math, so asking me to fill something 3/4 of the way is just asking for over-risen doughnut trouble. Oh well. They'll taste just as good, they just won't make it to the front of the class for photos. haha Every batch needs some testers, right?

Here are some of the nicer-looking ones before I glazed them. They're resting on my gorgeous new cake stand.

Let's not glaze over this critical step. (Thanks to Hubby for the action shot!)

Currently, the lovelies are setting their glaze, and I can't move or stack them until that happens, so no shots yet of the filled cake stand. But here is my little army of doughnuts. The chocolate ones aren't as intense as I feared, and the vanilla ones smell incredibly of nutmeg.

John picked the pink nonpareils for the vanilla doughnuts, and I chose the little discs for the chocolate ones.

My star students. I could weep they're so cute.

John and I will sample some of the herp mcderpington ones later, and these will be part of our datingversary/Valentine's Day breakfast tomorrow.

Happy snow day, and happy early Valentine's Day, everyone!