Valentine's Day Donuts

Sometime in January, a "life: beautiful" magazine fell in my lap that had a fantastic looking recipe for homemade cake donuts.  I mentally flipped through the calendar to find the next "special" day that could qualify for the possibility of a new family tradition and landed on Valentine's Day.

On Monday night I mixed up the dough.  And because Itty Bitty craves lots of chocolate, I mixed up chocolate and vanilla cake doughnut dough.  Off to the fridge it went for the night and on Valentine's morning I got to work.  Rolling, cutting, frying and glazing.  Next year, I'll only make one batch and probably the vanilla batch - with some chocolate glaze of course!  The vanilla donuts were moister and I really enjoyed the flavor more than the chocolate.  Go figure.

We discovered this morning that a few seconds in the microwave will revive the "day-old" leftovers quite nicely!  And as usual, I didn't follow the recipe to the T, so here's what I ended up making:

Vanilla Cake Donuts

3 1/4 cups All Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
2 Eggs
2/3 cups Granulated Sugar
1/4 cup melted Butter
1 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Tablespoon vinegar + Milk to equal 3/4 cup

Oil for frying
Glaze or Ganache of choice

1.  Beat eggs, sugar, melted butter and vanilla on high until smooth and creamy.
2.  Put vinegar in a glass measure and top off with milk.  Add baking soda and stir.  (This is the combo I learned to use to take the place of buttermilk).
3.  Add 1 cup of the flour, baking powder and nutmeg to the egg mixture and start mixer.   Add remaining flour and milk mixture alternately and mix thoroughly.
4.  Refrigerate dough until firm, or overnight.
5.  Roll out to about 1/2 inch thickness and cut with favorite cutters or an actual donut cutter.  I used a heart cookie cutter since they were for Valentine's day.
6.  Heat fry oil to 375 degrees and fry donuts until golden brown on each side.  1-2 minutes per side.
7.  Drain and cool on paper towels or a brown paper bag.  Glaze or toss with powdered sugar.