I once spent a Saturday as a twenty-something challenging myself to see how many doughnut shops I could hit (and eat) within a day’s time. In the Los Angeles area — home to more doughnut shops than anywhere else in the country — there was certainly no shortage of connect-the-do(nu)t options for anyone fool enough to have such a mission. I began the day at Foster’s Donuts in Santa Clarita and ended it at Blinky’s Donut Emporium on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, doubled over, but with a crumb-laced smile on my face.
I spent some of my misspent youth not in bars in long nights of alcohol-infused debauchery, but quiet mornings (and even afternoons) hanging in doughnut shops, overindulging, and becoming a studied expert in all the lingo of doughnut land (do you know the difference between a maple bar and a long John?). Journal in hand, my writerly ambitions bloomed in the light of pastry cases, under the influence of sugar, grease and caffeine.
I’ll admit I still have a bit of a doughnut “problem,” although life and age have wised and winnowed me down to a doughnut-every-other-week maximum. But National Doughnut Day, occurring the first Friday in June (this year, June 3), only serves as a reminder, an urge and a craving to seek out some kind of doughnut, immediately.
My greasy guilt is, at least, shared. Food writer John T. Edge, in his book “Donuts: An American Passion” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons; 2006) writes of “America’s conflicted love affair with donuts. We love them dearly and, knowing this, we loathe ourselves.”
My enchantment with doughnuts began as a small girl, when a fellow obsessive, my dad, took me on occasional trips to do grocery shopping and inevitably steered me to the boxes of glistening yeast doughnuts in the bakery section to pick out a “treat.” His first job — at a bakery — was spending early mornings glazing the doughnuts. My own childhood doughnut passion reached a zenith when our elementary school field trip landed us at the Daylight Donuts in Junction City, where, mesmerized by frying doughnuts floating in hot oil, I was inspired into my first crush on the gangly young man wrapped in a white apron who gave us our tour.
Fast-forward to my college days at K-State, where one only had to hear two words: “Swannie’s run,” and, abandoning textbooks, we loaded up in convoys of cars and headed to the back-alley door of this longtime institution in Manhattan to buy doughnuts or, more specifically “yum-yums,” double twisted plaits of dough, cinnamon-y and glazed, still warm and fresh out of the fryer. Sweet dreams really were made of this.
Doughnut-making seems a thing best left to the experts and the doughnut shops. But they can be made at home. My mother — unafraid of frying — made large batches of deep-fried plain yeast dough she called “skonkz,” a term passed down from her German grandmother. She made doughnuts, too, out of canned biscuits, cutting and stretching a hole in the middle and frying them up to be rolled in cinnamon-sugar. She even made from-scratch jelly doughnuts, which seems unlikely to happen in any kitchen.
Making the case for homemade doughnuts became easier (and less oily) with the advent of nonstick doughnut pans and baked doughnut recipes, truly of interest to cake-doughnut aficionados. Always up for acquiring a new baking pan, I fell for this method and didn’t look back. I’ve made versions with buttermilk and sour cream and flavored chocolate, crumb, apple cider, vanilla sprinkle, strawberry and even “king cake” doughnuts using my standard and mini doughnut pans, learning that there are endless possibilities. But I insist on the one ingredient that makes a cake doughnut taste like a cake doughnut — nutmeg.
Still, on a whim, whimsy or even a dare, I will slip out with one mission (and likely just one shop) on my mind. Be it a glazed Pershing or a toasted coconut, a doughnut will always make my day. KCL
Rebecca Howard grew up in Kansas and has written for the Los Angeles Daily News, the Los Angeles Times and LA Parent Magazine, and currently writes the food blog, “A Woman Sconed.”
Baked Sour Cream Doughnuts Crumb Baked Donuts Strawberry-Buttermilk Baked Doughnuts