Tag Archives: doughnuts

ESSENTIALS

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We all have essentials–you know, the absolute thing or things you can’t do without.

When I was single and surviving on my own–my two things were ketchup and dark chocolate. I discovered that if I plopped a decent dollop of ketchup in pot-roasts, hamburgers and pasta sauce, it brought the taste level up several notches. My Italian best friend, Rina and I were in perfect agreement about our secret ingredient. When her Nonna discovered our secret, her eye-rolling looked like an out-of-control seizure, accompanied with rapid Italian spewing from her lips. Rina and I spent a lengthy session in her cozy kitchen, making pasta sauce from scratch. We each brought home a few jars of Nonna’s treasured sauce and it wasn’t until years later, that we tried to remember exactly how she did it and what she actually used. At the time, we only knew her sauce tasted tons better than Heinz. And being young, we both felt Nonna would always be there for more sauce.

Both Rina and I graduated into more elaborate dishes and the Heinz was retired as our secret ingredient.

Home-made pizza–crust and made-from-scratch tomato sauce. . . .

Nonna would have danced with joy. . .

Which brings me to my second essential—chocolate. And not just any chocolate, this is the Belgian dark chocolate, at least 72%.

Bakers all have failures. Let’s face it. We’re all learning, especially if baking powder was accidently omitted; an oven temperature set too high; a heavy hand stirring the ingredients. For someone learning to bake, there are a slew of pitfalls to be avoided–cakes that sink in the middle; cookies needing something to make it better;, cupcakes that never grew to adulthood but stayed the same as when it first went into the oven.

This is where chocolate comes to the rescue. Drench any pastry with chocolate and it will be a guaranteed winner. I don’t have too many failures but I still enjoy melting pieces of dark chocolate bars on top of cupcakes just out of the oven. If the cupcake failed to rise, no one would notice with a chocolate bar melted on top. No-one except a crass, rude person who doesn’t appreciate really good chocolate bar cupcakes.

When all else fails, there has to be a back-up plan. Mine are doughnuts and not just any doughnut, it has to be a Yonnie’s. AND, if it’s a foodie emergency, Yonnie’s is just down the street. . .

A Yonnie’s regular doughnut dusted with fine sugar. . . .

Or a Yonnie’s fritter drizzled with a bit of glaze. . . .

Rina and I did survive with cooking lessons from her Nonna and my Mom. We are both older, wiser and married, sharing our culinary skills with our granddaughters, who are far away from home and experiencing life on their own.

Over a coffee at Yonnie’s, Rina showed me a text from her granddaughter: Hi Nonna, My housemate Leesa swears all I need in our cupboard is Heinz ketchup and Belgian dark chocolates. But I told her I really can cook and bake. . . .thanks to my Nonna.

We laughed as we remembered our early days on our own. Some things never change. But some things do.

DOUGHNUTS

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Doughnuts are Mankind’s perfect non-food. Non-food because dieticians call it empty calories. As you can probably tell, next to chocolate, the dark kind, I love doughnuts.

Americans have their Krispy Kremes, but Canadians have Tim Horton’s or “Timmy’s” as the locals call it. It’s the Canadian go-to store for doughnuts of all types. Timmy’s does make nourishing soups, healthy muffins, sandwiches and blender drinks, but I go for the doughnuts. There are the traditional round doughnuts with the hole in the middle that has about a thousand and one different kinds of toppings such as sprinkles, coconut, mini-smarties, a simple glaze and always, one with chocolate.

My favourite is a cruller, lightly drizzled with a glaze on a fluffy, airy doughnut blob that simply melts in your mouth. There is also the traditional Bismarck, the plump doughnut without the hole and filled with raspberry jelly–sometimes a lemon filling or blueberry or cherry jam. Most people know this as a jelly doughnut. There is also an apple fritter which is a little more solid with chopped apples and cinnamon studded throughout. And, then there’s  the deliciously decadent Long John’s, sometimes filled with a light custard filling or not–with a topcoat of dark chocolate along its length. Lately, I’ve been doing research on Long John’s at any place that makes fresh doughnuts on the premises. I discovered my closest supermarket, a Save-On, that is a mere 3-blocks walk from where I live–makes Long John’s early in the morning and if I time my morning walk right,  I can purchase warm, custard-free Long John’s with its topcoat of melted dark chocolate. I always buy 2 so I can share with my Hubby. Of course, he knows that I know that he doesn’t eat doughnuts, so I get to enjoy both. His loss, my gain, in more ways than one!  Safeway, another supermarket that use to be on the Save-On site, also had a big bakery and made doughnuts too. At that time, the Safeway baker also made “Orange Twisties,” a decadent piece of twisted doughnut drizzled with tiny bits of grated orange peel in a light orange-flavoured glaze–sweet, satisfying and so not-good for you! Safeway disappeared and so did their Orange Twisties.

At the annual Classic Car Show, the Rotary Club sells mini-doughnuts. I love these too as they roll off the conveyer belt and scooped into paper bags–still warm and lightly dusted with cinnamon sugar. Timmy’s has the larger version of Cinnamon-Sugar Old-Fashions” and if you’re really worried about the sugar, you can also get them plain.

Thinking about doughnuts does have its pitfalls. It’s late at night and your mouth and tummy is more than ready for a doughnut  and all you have are healthy wheat-thin crackers. . . . Bummer!