Thursday, September 26, 2013

Recipe for Doughnuts like Krispy Kreme

We made these a couple of weeks ago, and they turned out simply perfect. My recipe is a slight adaptation of the one found on Instructables.




Donuts
3 packages yeast (2 Tbsp plus 3/4 tsp) 
1/2 cup (120ml) water  (105-115F / 40-46C)
2 1/4 cups (530ml) milk, scalded, then cooled
3/4 cup (169g) sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 eggs
1/2 cup (113g) palm oil (solid white at room temperature and performs much like shortening, but much healthier, without the overwhelming flavor of coconut oil), coconut oil, or butter
7 1/2 cups (940g) all-purpose flour
lard or palm oil for frying

Glaze
1/2 cup (113g) butter
3 cups (375g) powdered sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla
6-9 tablespoons (90-135ml) whole milk 

Directions

Scald the milk on top of your stove, and let cool. 

Proof your yeast by adding it to the warm water.  Mix it up and let it rest.

Combine yeast, milk, sugar, salt, eggs, palm oil/butter and 3 cups (375g) flour.

Beat on low for 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly.

Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally.

Carefully stir in remaining flour until smooth.

Cover and let rise until double, 30-60 minutes. 

After the dough has risen, turn dough onto floured surface; roll around lightly to coat with flour.

Gently roll dough 1/2-inch thick with floured rolling pin.

Cut with floured doughnut cutter.  

Cover and let rise until double, 30-40 minutes.

**If you want to make these donuts for breakfast, let the donuts rise in the refrigerator overnight!***

Make up the glaze at this point because it can sit at room temp until the donuts are fried and ready to be dipped.

Melt the butter and stir in powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth.

Add milk until desired consistency is reached.

*** to make chocolate glaze, melt 6 ounces of chocolate along with the butter!***

Use a deep pan to heat the oil. Be safe!

Heat your oil to 275F.  A thermometer makes this part fool-proof, and you can monitor the heat to make sure it stays in this prime frying range.

Use a scrap of donut first to test different frying times.

Even after you take the donut out of the oil, the remaining oil on it is hot enough to continue cooking it, so err on the side of pulling them out too soon rather than too dark.

Carefully place the donuts in the oil.  Cook on each side until just blonde.  Use tongs to flip the donuts and remove them from the oil.

Place donuts on paper towels to drain.

Dip them in the glaze and set them on a rack to dry.  

Enjoy! 

Variation: Instead of using a donut cutter, you could use a round biscuit cutter without a hole in the middle. When the donuts are done, you can fill them with jam or cooked, cooled pudding. 



These donuts were a huge hit at our house, though I will say they are anything but healthy fare, intended for regular consumption. I am thinking once a year on these babies is enough.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

How to make kombucha at home

Fermented foods and beverages, such as kefir, yogurt, sourdough bread, sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, etc. are highly probiotic, as well as full of enzymes and vitamins (especially B vitamins). I am working on a separate post explaining in great detail how fermented foods play such a huge role in being healthy. In a nutshell, I would say that adding ferments has been monumental, at least as important and efficient as switching to being all organic, if not even more so.

Kombucha is fermented sweetened black tea. It is incredibly refreshing, healthy, hydrating, naturally fizzy, and very tasty. At least the homemade kind. I have tried one from the store, and while the health benefits are the same, I greatly prefer the taste of my fresh, home-brewed kombucha. It's also much cheaper, plus you can play around with the various teas and flavors.




Inevitably, someone will raise the concern that kombucha (or other fermented foods and drinks) contain alcohol. This is partly true: anytime you have sugars (that's carbs) and yeast present, you have alcohol fermentation. Of course, yeast spores are everywhere, even in the air you are breathing right now. Therefore, wherever you have sugar, you also have trace amounts of alcohol.

There are two ways to ferment something: by yeast, or by bacteria. Yeast fermentation always produces alcohol, whereas bacterial fermentation eats up these sugar alcohols. Since kombucha is made using both yeast and bacteria, the end product will contain only trace amounts of alcohol - less than the browning banana in your fruit bowl, or than what is found on the outside of grapes. At a rate of 1 cup sugar per gallon of tea, the alcohol level in kombucha will remain far below the legally permissible limit of 0.5% alcohol for soft drinks. This is why kombucha is considered a soft drink, and can be bought by anyone of any age. Even regular soft drinks contain about 0.2-0.4% alcohol, kefir about 0.5%, etc. Such small amounts of alcohol do not cause intoxication, because the human body and liver are capable of filtering these naturally occurring alcohols out of the system. Intoxication is a result of pouring in more than the body can process and eliminate - picture a funnel being filled faster in the top, than it can empty out in the bottom.

Ideally, you will be able to obtain a starter culture for free from a friend, or you may want to try your luck with craigslist or freecycle. If not, you can obtain a wonderful, inexpensive, fresh SCOBY starter culture from Azure Standard, or directly from Herbucha.com. I am also a great fan of Cultures for Health, however, their starter culture comes in a dehydrated state and must be rehydrated, an extra step that I would rather skip. They also have a great video on how to make kombucha.

Have you tried kombucha, and have you tried making your own?

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Pedophilia - the new frontier

Those pushing their sexually depraved agendas have already won the battle on the homo/sodomite front. For years, I have been saying that normalizing pedophilia is next up.

Avowed atheist Richard Dawkins has just proven my point:

Sexual assault victims’ organizations are slamming evolutionary biologist and leading atheist Richard Dawkins for comments he made about the inoffensiveness of “mild pedophilia.”

Dawkins made the remarks in a recent interview with The Times magazine. He said that during his time at a boarding school as a boy in the 1950s, a teacher “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.” Dawkins described the incident as “mild pedophilia” that left him no worse off. Neither Dawkins nor the other boys abused by this teacher suffered permanent physical or mental damage, he said.

“I don’t think he did any of us lasting harm,” said Dawkins.

Dawkins also said that it was improper to judge the acts committed by this teacher by today’s higher moral standards.

“I am very conscious that you can’t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours,” he said. “Just as we don’t look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today.”

His perspective on sexual assault drew strong criticism from numerous victims’ rights organizations, including Peter Watt, director of child protection at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

“Mr. Dawkins seems to think that because a crime was committed a long time ago we should judge it in a different way,” said Watt, according to The Washington Post. “But we know that the victims of sexual abuse suffer the same effects whether it was 50 years ago or yesterday.”

Dawkin made the comments to suggest the outrage over recently revealed child abuse scandals was overblown, according to The Daily Mail.

No lasting harm? Is that why he turned out to be a rabid, God-hating atheist bent on convincing others to reject God?

And none of the others boys suffered lasting harm, either? How does he know? Does he know every victim? Has he followed all of them for the last 5 decades?

Today's higher moral standards? And his example is racism? Because being a racist is so much worse than openly embracing sodomy like our society today does.

Clearly, Dawkins is just going mild on his own depravity. After reading this, I have zero doubt that he himself is a pedophile. Openly accepting him and his like is next on the agenda of perverting humanity.