DONUTS.. Wat a Nut-case...

Is it gonna be another one of those 5 minute fever fab till the bubble burst or wat? 1st was bubble tea, then pork floss bread, Beard Papa and now the latest food craze >>> DONUTS..

i remembered i used to stand outside the confectionary shop @ Clementi after class.. watching the auntie with the red-dyed hair frying the donuts buns and the twisted dough.. Once she asked me why don't i get one myself, i told her that i used up my pocket money for the day in school.. so she offered me a plain dough, all sugar-coated.. one that is pretty odd shaped looking... which i tot she offered me out of pitiness.. she must have tot that it's harder to sell it off cos it wasn't presentable enuf for the shelf to be platable to the customer...

My ex-bf would never forget to satisfy his donut fix whenever we catch a movie @ Tampines Mall every Sunday afternoon.. he loved the fluffy feeling in every bite.. somewhat cottony and yet bouncy... You should see how goofy he looked when his face gets smeared with the icing sugar, licking his oily fingers and he will give u that silly smirk... He makes DONUT look so heavenly delicious that U will think having one is never enuf..

In the recent months, donuts craze is evidently breathtaking.. U cannot be oblivious enough to ignore it..So... wat so great abt this high in carbo, greassy tasting dough that drives everyone going ga ga...?

DONUTS.. according to Wikipedia.. it is a sweet deep-fried thingy made from dough. A couple of common shapes...The Torus-shaped ring and the filled doughnut, a flattened sphere injected with jam, custard or cream or another sweet filling....

The HISTORY...
I think it's been around for centuries...This simple staple food, can be eaten anytime of the day, has many debatable history of it.. Pretty interesting and complicated.. Even the story about the how the hole was invented is full of conflicting evidence...

These deep-fried cakes comes with a long European history and roots in still earlier Middle Eastern cuisine. Guess it arises with the question of the leftover scraps of dough when people made bread. In England, they dropped the bits into soup or water, and made dumplings. But in Holland and Germany, the cooks decided to fry the dough in hot oil...they decorated their leftovers a bit more by shaping them into decorative knots (dough knots), and rolling in sugar afterwards.

Then doughnuts were known as olykoeks, or oily cakes, and it's primarily the Dutch who are credited with taking sweet dough balls and frying them in pork fat.They were introduced to America much later as oily fried buns...Eaten during the Dutch Christmas season...and for special occasions throughout the year.

Some pointed out that the olykoeken tend not to cook through in the very middle, so some makers would put nuts in the center (“dough-nuts”) to make them more palatable...Later in the New World, the Dutch replaced their frying oil with the preferred lard (far more available here), as it produced a tender and greaseless crust...

>> Oh my godness Glorious Me... Eureka..!! I was just wondering how the name came abt.. when there is NO NUT in it...???!!


The HOLE
It's funny how dougnut never started with that distintive and characteristic hole... I have eaten dougnuts that are filled with a blob of jam and cream... So What made Donut so distinctive was the hole in the middle that identifies it. How did the shape change from the original diamond?

The uncooked centers seem to have been, directly or indirectly, the reason behind the hole. Some claimed that its the invention of a New England sea captain named Hanson Gregory, around 1847. Gregory’s mother Elizabeth made olykoeken and sent them with her son on his journeys to sea. Now.. Answer this trival question of the story how the hole was made:

Was it because:
A) He simply didn’t like the uncooked centers (or the nuts his mother filled them with) and poked them out;

B) Because he may have encountered a cake with a hole in the middle during his journeys and decided to adapt the idea to the olykoeken.

C) Gregory needed a place to put his olykoek while he steered the boat, so he impaled it on one of the spokes of the steering wheel.


The Answer is....All of the above actually....

(C) is the most popular version of the story.. but no one really knows...Whatever Gregory’s real reason for adding the hole, it had the beneficial effect of making the doughnuts cook more evenly, and the idea quickly caught on.

Nearly thirty years later, in 1872, John Blondell received the first patent for a doughnut cutter. Doughnut technology advanced significantly over the next few decades. By the 1930s, automated doughnut-making machines were producing the treats in huge quantities. And in the 1940s and 1950s, chains like Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts sprang up, taking mass-produced doughnuts to the masses.


The RECIPE:

The usual mixture for an American doughnut is a combination of four, eggs, and milk, raised by baking powder or by bicarbonate of soda activated by sour milk.

Different ethnic groups brought their own doughnut variations. Ultimately, even the English American cooks adopted them as well. It has gone thru upgrading as well.. like the Chemical leavening (notably baking powder) was substituted for yeast, producing a more cakelike and less breadlike product. In the same era inexpensive tin doughnut cutters with holes were manufactured commercially and sold widely.

WHERE CAN U GET IT?
While we may not be able to cart home boxes of Krispy Kremes from Australia or Dunkin' Donut from the United States. You can now get good tasting donuts @ The Donut Factory, which has a store opened at Raffles City. Opened by businessman Gunter Rahim, a half-German and half-Pakistani, He muz be nuts abt the DONUTs...

Buying his donuts is quite the sensory yet tormenting.... U can just get really "orgasmic" by standing infront of his shop...... your heart is pumping rapidly, following the beat with every almost-perfect dough churned out by his high tech machine...your lips gets dry up, your hunger builds up... With the instant rush... you torture yourself further by joining the snaking queues in front of his speciality donut shop, togther with the others... hungry waiting wacky students, housewives with babies in pram, office executives in power suits, old uncles and aunties..

Well well.. i'm not in such a crazy mood to join the queue for a box of 12 glazed donuts which cost abt $10-$11 and sampled all 15 flavours... Thats why i have never tasted it before... so i can't comment if they made really good DONUTS.. i believe they muz have been.. otherwise the crowd will not be returning day after day and the queues are longer than the queue for the newly launched condos in town or even comparable to the queue for the sale of the latest Harry Potter book series... Soon.. it could be as long as the queue to join the Singapore Idol audition... U just watch and see...


Just a quick check online... I discover there are quite a few donut speciality shops around..

1. Donut Factory - Donut Factory
{B1 Raffles City Shopping Centre & L1 Suntec City Tower 3, outside/near Carrefour there}


2. Dunkin Donuts - Dunkin Donuts Delivery to SG
{Deliver frm JB evry wed & sun, collect @ City hall mrt stn 75% & other 6 locations 25%}..
Can buy directly fresh frm JB @ Plaza Pelangi (app. 1km frm causeway), Plaza Kotaraya (1km oso), Aeon Tebra City Jusco (3-5km i tink). Cheap & many varieties.


3. Missy Donut - Missy Donut
{Bukit Panjang Plaza}


4. Summer House Donut (Frm Australia) - Summer House Donut
{L1 Burlington Square, Bencoolen Street, beside Burger King & L1 Ang Mo Kio Hub}
Cool.. they have their website going for e-orders...
http://www.summerhousedonut.com/


5. Baby Doughnut -
{Frm JB, City Square Lvl3, assorted designs & flavours.}


6. Pop Doh - Selling assorted donut @ Takashimaya B2 Food Central there @ a corner beside the Italian Gelato Ice-cream stall. I tink cheapest donut is the small choc wif nuts $0.55.


7. No Name (not sure d name of stall) - selling doughnuts mini-bite sized made by japanese baker, $4 for 12; if buy 3boxes/dozens is for $10 (i think so).
{@ Central, Clarke Quay Basement}.


8. Munchy Donuts - Munchy Donut@ Tanjong Katong... A cafe @ S'pore Expo near Hall 2 there.


9. Chewy Junior - @ Blk 1 Tanjong Pagar Plaza {a "wulu" place lolx}
looks & taste lik a cream puff +donut.


10. J Co Donut - @ Batam, Megamall (take a ferry ride to & fro frm Harbour Front @ $30
{Would u make a trip Jus go buy donuts?} But Things there are realli cheap n in rupiah


11. Krispy Kreme Donuts - in philipines, america, jarkata.....

12. Mister Donuts - Mister Donut CUte & nice designs.
{in Bangkok, lik famous MBK etc. Taiwan & japan oso }

-- Nutty Gal -- Jul 29.07