Ethnic Flavor: Jelly Donuts (Sort-of)

In case you don't know, we are currently in the middle of the holiday of Hanukkah (or Chanukkah or Chanukah or Hanukah or about a million other ways to spell it).  Hanukkah is a holiday where we commemorate the miracle of oil that was only supposed to last for one day and instead lasted for eight days by eating lots and lots of foods fried in oil.  Traditional Hanukkah foods (at least for Jews of eastern European descent) are latkes -- potato pancakes friend in oil -- and sufganiyot -- jelly or other filled donuts.

Where I currently live in Texas, there are no jelly donuts that are kosher, so none that we can bring into our house, so I figured that I would try to make some.  I turned to my friend Ari, who has a blog called Baking and Books, for the recipe.  I had seen it on her blog last year and they looked sooo good (you should really check them out).

However, despite all the effort, something went wrong.  I think the oil was way to hot because the donuts got super brown before they were cooked on the inside.  Ari says to cook the donuts for 30 seconds on each side at 375 degrees, which is where I thought my oil was, but they would have been charred, black balls at that point.  And, when I took them out, they were round and then all the uncooked dough exploded out of them, leaving them with the funny shape you see above (sorry for the terrible picture -- the donuts were made and consumed at night). 

I figured I could not make them any worse, so I decided to bake them after I fried them to see if I could get them to cook through.  I covered them (since they didn't need any more browning) and baked them for 20 minutes at 350 and they actually turned out great.  Aside from their funny shape, they were cooked through on the inside and the dough was delicious.  I injected them with jelly after they were cooked, since I was afraid I would not be able to seal them well enough (and they would have become an unsalvageable disaster, so I am glad I did that).  I used this new, seedless Smuckers Black Raspberry, which was also great.

I think all the problems were my fault.  I blame myself, not the recipe.  You should try them.  I will try them again, the next time I want my whole kitchen to smell like oil, which may not be until next Hanukkah!

You can find the recipe here.

PS -- If you are wondering where Sarah has been, it is finals and she is a college girl!