Donuts or Doughnuts

All throughout the Christmas shopping season, I had my eyes on this nice and little mini-donut maker.  How simple it would be to make a batter, pour it into the little molds, close the lid, and within a small time limit have wonderful cake donuts.  Well, I didn't have time to get the device and waited until after Christmas when I thought I may be able to find one at a discounted cost.

Well, little did I know, they were sold out, of everywhere.  Bella Cucina had this special deal with Macy's and according to one store clerk, they were so sold out that they were not allowed to order more from the Macy's warehouse.  Not a single store in the St. Louis metropolitan area, had one of these donut makers left.

I was sad.

Next came my wonderful wife who was with me and dragged along with our kids to at least two different Macy's in two different malls, looking for this rare and impossible to find device.  I didn't want to order it online as it was as much as $10-$15 for shipping on a $25 item made it definitely not worth my time.  So, my wife looks on Amazon and gets me a donut pan as well as a donut cutter and cookbook and I am ecstatic.

Here is a run-down of what I am doing:  I am making baked donuts.  That would be the great tasting donuts that you know and love but without the frying and grease part.  It would also cut down on calories.  Now, making a baked donut also means that besides the calories that I am cutting out from the act of frying, I can also alter the recipe to a more sugar free or even fat free method and reduce the calories even more.

My pan:

My pan with some chocolate chip cookie donuts:

Now, if you follow a simple recipe, your donuts will be perfect every time.  No more greasy wheels of sugar but instead perfectly light and simple shapes of goodness. So, for everyone who wants to make donuts, I highly suggest this donut pan.

Well, completely unrelated to this, a few searches in Flickr proved interesting in regards to donuts: