A New Take on Tradition

My best friend Aurora and I have a great tradition– we love to make homemade doughnuts. I think it started when we were in about grade eight and we've made them many times. The first time, we pulled out the cookie cutters to find the doughnut shaped ones (that have a pre-made hole in them) and realized that there were a lot of doughnut possibilities in that tupperware of cookie cutters. We tried making a gingerbread man doughnut with the two different-sized men that we had, but it mostly just burned. Our best outcome was without a doubt the star doughnut. We had two perfectly sized star cookie cutters that made fun shaped doughnuts and little poky doughnut holes. It's a fun tradition that I've loved doing throughout the years.

Fast-forward to last weekend. Aurora got married last summer and she and her husband have a nice little basement suite. We decided that her home hasn't really been broken in until it's been blessed with the smell of deep-fried food as we whip up a batch of doughnuts. When her husband, John, heard that we were planning to turn his house into a fast food joint for the evening, he made a special request: one of his favourite things is Boston Creme doughnuts.

I'd never made filled doughnuts before. It always seemed like a really daunting task that was for kitchen experts, not lowly aspiring cooks like myself. Aurora downloaded a recipe off the internet and we got started. It surprised me how easy they were and how delicious they tasted!

Our next doughnut making plan: mini filled doughnuts in varying flavours. All the puddings at the grocery store looked so tempting!