It’s a Jelly, Eh

Inspirational song: You’re Welcome (Moana)

Any food worth making, is worth making gluten-free. At least that’s how it works around here. If there is a gluten-containing item that I miss from the Before Times, I will try seven or eight different versions of it without wheat, oats, or any of the other problem grains, until I either find the perfect replacement or decide it can’t be done. I divide my attention between homemade versions and store-bought (and thank goodness there is a really spiffy GF bakery on Main Street, open during non-Pandemic days).

Today’s home cooking experiment was with jelly donuts. Yeah, I said what I said. I made my own, and it wasn’t even all that hard. Okay, there was an hour break in between frying them and getting home from King Soopers after discovering that jams with fruit chunks will not go through a narrow opening in a squirt bottle. (We ran out for actual jelly, plus a large cartload of other stuff, since it was my first trip to the grocery store since before the lockdown started.)

I was pleased to learn that there were still signs of life in the bulk bag of yeast I bought late last year. It had gotten left on the counter, almost touching a hot pot on the stove, and I thought the yeast was all dead. Put it in a cup of milk that was one day away from going bad, and a hefty scoop of sugar, and it foamed right up. Success! The recipe was fairly simple—Bob’s Red Mill flour, baking powder, sugar, eggs, butter, and the sloppy yeast mixture. It rose for an hour in a warm oven, and with gentle folding and dusting with more flour, I had a workable dough to cut up. I waited fifteen minutes for the oil to heat all the way, and I felt like the temp it called for was too hot. The outsides got too dark and the insides were just barely done all the way. Next time I would probably make them just a little thinner to compensate, as well as turn down the heat. Once they were sugared and jellied, they tasted a lot like beignets, which leads me to think it might be more direct to cut them into squares rather than using a biscuit cutter, for simplicity.

I’m not used to such heavy, sugary, ultra-carb and fatty breakfasts, and once I had put down a couple of these little beauties, I tipped over and had a nice long nap. I probably won’t ever eat that much at once again, but it is nice to know that this is a viable option next time I can share them with a crowd.