donuts

after six days of cycling through verdant countryside and subject to the daily, hourly vagaries of the weather, there was catching up of all kinds to do once i got home. chief among those was the need to eat when and what i wanted. so as someone who (despite my sleek tanned appearance) has consumed his fair share of what is nominally “junk” food . . . . i’d like to spend a little time focussing here on one of my favourite forms of junk food - the donut.

to my credit, the taste for junk food has diminished considerably over the past few years but i still get the occasional hankering for something that as food goes has little bearing on my real or imagined needs and absolutely no bearing on my ambition to be healthy and to maintain that state.

the donut or doughnut was likely introduced into north america by dutch settlers who brought with them something called an olykoek or “oily cake”. sounds appetizing doesn’t it! believe it or not, the first confirmed sighting of the word doughnut is attributed to the use of the word by american author washington irving perhaps best known for his two stories “the legend of sleepy hollow” (which you can read online right here) and if you’re in the mood for a short (4 1/2 minutes) movie dating right back to the late 1890’s then you should watch this silent version of “rip van winkle”.



over the years, the donut family tree has evolved into the spectacularly divergent thing of beauty that it now is . . . here’s a sampler of what’s possible when you have a donut craving . . .
if you like this image then head over to gmushrooms who’ll sell you a much much larger version of this to slap on your fridge or on the wall of your garage to remind you of what you’re missing.

so back to the donut. what’s with the hole in the middle?

most of the answers that i was able to dig up agree that the reason for the hole lies in the fact that the interior of these fried cakes would not cook fully without a hole in the center. in other words you’d end up with a doughy centre and that would be sort of disgusting. my kids have told me that’s how they feel when i don’t quite cook cake all the way through. i see it as a nice segue into mashing the cake up into ice cream but they don’t share my enthusiasm.

the other story i came across is that a sea captain named hanson gregory, while manning his post one stormy night, found it impossible both to steer his vessel and to eat his fried cake. out of sheer frustration, and probably out of hunger, he impaled his cake over one of the spokes of the ship's wheel, thereby creating a finger hold with which to grip the cake.

my favourite donut is the boston cream donut. the boston cream is a magical concoction consisting of a hollow-centred donut usually coated with a chocolate glaze and filled inside with some sort of creamy goo. sorry if i don’t make it sound appealing but it’s not one of my skills to make food seem more amazing than it actually is. but, they are really really good and it’s one of those foods that i have real difficulty restraining myself from snaffling down in bulk quantities. the boston cream is a variation on a kind of cake called the berliner, which is a german pastry usually filled with whatever you want - jam, cream or whatever. the filling is placed in the donut through the insertion of a syringe, kind of like a turkey baster.

now, as i mentioned earlier, eating donuts takes you out of the realm of eating healthily and the details are alarming but here they are . . . . i took this data from krispy kreme’s website - arguably the least health-conscious of all the donut manufacturers, amazingly suppliers to many school fundraisers . . . hmmmmmm. they say that a boston cream looks like this on the stats chart: calories - 300 carbs - 35 fat in grams -17

if you’re totally put off by those statistics or by my graphic descriptions, then good! that just leaves more of these yummies on the shelves for me!

i recently went into a local donut-making establishment to pick up some of the little “bits” that they sell you in units of twenty, fourty, or sixty for my kids. i saw this item on the counter and absolutely had to have it . . .

ladies and gentlemen, the most flamboyant of all the donuts . . . “the hawaiian”!

it's not often that food enters this house to such an uproar but the mere sight of this donut sent my kids into paroxysms. it's so improbable. the colours. the name.

the donut connoisseur’s site fry my bacon, has this to say about people who buy such things “"by far the most flamboyant of the donut eaters. their tiny minds are dazzled by the array of colourful sprinkles. do not be alarmed if a hawaiian donut lover suddenly bursts into show tunes. they have the tendency to wear loud shirts and smile at you like loons." i only sing when i am alone or in my classroom so have no fear should you unknowingly stand at my side in a donut eatery. for more similar observations and evaluations you should read this article.

when i showed this donut to my kids they were absolutely gobsmacked and wondered at the “hawaiian” connection. i suggested it had something to do with the bright colours or something. the reality is that there is such a beast as the “hawaiian donut” but it’s a very different sort of experience than the one i had when i snarfed down this multicoloured sprinkle beladen dough ring. to learn more about the real “hawaiian” check this out.


anyhow, enough yacking about the donut. i think i’m gonna nip over to the shop and pick up a box.