Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up this weekend and I’ll be out of town for the 31st Athens To Atlanta road skate in Georgia. I feel like I’m missing out on yet another year of The Feast. To compensate, I’m in pumpkin overdrive. It has only been a couple of days since I returned home from weekend Berlin jaunt. I could not wait another day to roll out all the pumpkin baked goods from my kitchen.
One of my latest new toy is a doughnut baking pan. I am generally not a fan of specialty baking pans because they are single purpose gadgets taking up precious room in my cupboards. I only relented because of all the baked doughnut recipes I came across lately. Must be the power of suggestion. After my eye opening experience of frying yeast and cake doughnuts at home, I’m wary of baking ring shape muffins and call them doughnuts. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for my tasters, one glance at the Pumpkin Cake Doughnut recipe from King Arthur Flour and my resolve wavered. That bright orange hue and perfectly round shape were just too persuasive.
Ever since Homer Simpson put “d’oh!” and “mmm, doughnut…” into the collective conscience of pop culture, I cannot eat another doughnut without thinking about his stupid hijinks. I also forever associate a doughnut with pink glaze and rainbow sprinkles. The recipe suggests a coating of cinnamon sugar which I gamely followed by first dipping in melted butter. The double layers of spicy sweet coating covered each doughnut beautifully. But! A glaze was what I wanted and I would not be denied even if it was not pink.
I quickly threw together a maple glaze using icing sugar and maple syrup. It was mesmerizing to watch the thick glaze dripping down the sides of each doughnut at glacial pace. I cannot tell you how much I love the contrast between the orange doughnut and the beige glaze. It is the colour of autumn, of falling leaves, of harvest. Every single one in my batch of 15 is autumn in a neat little package. All my prejudice against baked doughnuts flew out the window at first bite. These pumpkin cake doughnuts are moist, tender, lightly sweet, not greasy, and definitely NOT muffins. I think I am infatuated.
There are many other pumpkin treats I cannot wait to make. A streamlined version of pumpkin pie is high on my list. It will be a decadent treat while I leisurely sort out all the photos I took in Berlin. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite photos from this trip. Pretzel, Brandenburg Gate, and blue sky neatly sum up all the great things I enjoyed in Berlin!
