Last night was a hectic night, as are most nights at the HAP house. Mary arrived at six, followed by Corelyn shortly thereafter, and the frantic race to doughnuts, pancakes, and muffins began. We’re shooting a photo shoot this weekend for the blog and Mary’s 365 project, and because we can. The shoot is going to be wild and crazy, and involves the beach, and oven, homemade doughnuts, nifty aprons, and red nails.
Before Mary could blink, I had heated milk, melted shortening, put my yeast in water, and helped Corelyn whip up some muffin mix. We decided somehow to fill the muffin tins in the middle of the kitchen while we waited for the yeast to do its thing.
“Can you turn on…”
“The oven?” Corelyn asked.
“Yes, but I really don’t want you to. But we have to.”
As the oven inched towards 400 degrees, we set the muffins aside and finished the doughnut dough. Then we set it aside to rise. 7:15. 15 minutes behind. That was close.
Onto pancakes.
“When did you make the doughnut dough?” Mary asked as we finished that off and cleaned the bowl for pancakes.
“Just now. We’re going to make pancakes. Ready?” As I gathered the ingredients, Mary said, “Wait, you’re making them from scratch?” Which we were. (Especially since the blueberry muffins were from a Jiffy Mix box.)
Let me let you in on a little secret. Pancakes are hilariously easy. They consist of milk (or buttermilk if you have it laying around like we did), flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon (if you’re Mary and read the wrong recipe but simultaneously make a delicious discovery), eggs, and some oil. They are ridiculous. I could make ’em in my sleep. And somehow they always taste better homemade. This is the recipe we used was very similar to this one.
We did have to add about a half-cup of extra buttermilk to make sure they were liquid enough to pour. Then, Mary directed us for the size of the them as we made cute stacks for our shoot. Half-way through making them, genius stuck and I decided we should make hippopotamus shaped pancakes.
This ended with one hippo-shaped pancake (because I was using a cookie cutter. The smarter thing would have been to cut them after I made pancakes, but alas, I did not think of this. As we finished up the pancakes, we headed to the dining room to lay out our doughnuts. There were definitely pictures taken, but not by me, so you’ll see them soon enough. Soon two jelly roll pans and the Silpat were both covered with doughnuts, Mary clicking away and Corelyn giving them center holes. Corelyn was also making us dinner, and Mary heated up her dinner, and as we finished with the doughnuts we headed to the living room to eat dinner and wait for them to rise.
At some point in this chaos S showed up to hang out for a bit, and we were having a conversation in the living room about who knows what, and I exclaimed, “You’re so weird.” To which he replied:
“Really? ‘Cause I’m not the one with a coffee table with a tray of muffins and two stacks of pancakes on it.”
“Why is this weird?” Mary asked from her perch on the ground.
“I think this is the first time our cooking has reached all the way into the living room,” Corelyn added. Jeff merely rolled his eyes.
Now, everyone, back to the kitchen.
As I heated the oil up for the doughnuts, I realized that the candy thermometer we have has a “doughnut” line to show you were to heat your oil up to.
Delightful. once the heat was up to temperature, the frying began. There are pictures of this too, so don’t worry your pretty heart.
After frying all the doughnuts (of which there must have been 30-40, easily) we looked at each other, the kitchen, and sighed. Mary had left during the frying, Scott had peaced once he put in his “man doughnut” (about 4 times the size of the little dainty doughnuts we were making) and Jeff had put the camera down and headed to the living room. We were left with the usual – a colossal mess. Luckily Corelyn is a dishwashing wizard, and we got most all the dishes cleaned and the flour washed off of most surfaces before calling it a night around 11:30.
Just another night here at Garlic, My Soul.
[addtoany] Yum