welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen and Sunday morning and the old
cook book show today we're going to do another donut recipe out of the five
roses cookbook and this one was published in 1915 and the recipe we're
going to do today is molasses donuts so we'll start off with some molasses now
it doesn't say what kind of molasses to use so I'm gonna start out with some
fancy molasses and see if I can make up an entire cup I don't think I can I've
got some cooking molasses and hopefully between the two cartons I'll be able to
get enough okay just enough put that into our mixing
bowl now if you like blackstrap molasses you could certainly use all blackstrap
molasses or all cooking molasses and if you're not a huge fan of molasses flavor
then I would suggest using the fancy molasses at least those are the grades
that we have here in Canada and a second note for all of the eagle-eyed people
who love to look at my measuring cups and say that I'm measuring incorrectly
this is 1915 Canada and in 1915 Canada we used a different size measuring cup
than twenty20 Canada and in both cases it's a different size measuring cup than
is used in the United States so sometimes you look at it and you go oh
your measurements are all wrong they're not wrong they're different now next in
it asks for buttermilk and so this is 105 years ago and it's asking for
buttermilk but it's not asking for this buttermilk it would be asking for the
actual liquid left over from churning butter which is thin and clear it's
almost clear yellow kind of looks like apple juice and so I know you've heard
me say this before but this is not the liquid left over from churning butter
this is 1% milk that's been inoculated with different bacteria and allowed to
ferment and the reason I know that this cookbook is asking for that clear yellow
liquid is because one recipe over it asks for sour
milk and in the parlance of 1915 this would be considered sour milk nope
that's left out bacteria gets in it starts to ferment and it turns it sour
the commercial buttermilk that you get at a grocery store today in Canada is
that fermented sour milk it's just done in a very controlled way that was two
eggs that I just put in there this is some ground ginger and some melted
butter now it doesn't it doesn't give really any mixing instructions so I'm
just gonna use a whisk and try to bring this together a little bit before I
start adding the flour okay so we have reached the point in the recipe
that drives some people up the wall those people that need to micromanage
the ingredients down to the milligram find this very disturbing the recipe
doesn't tell you how much flour to use it just tells you to add flour until you
get to a soft dough so I'm gonna start it with a couple of cups of flour sort
of I'm not really measuring because the intent of this recipe is just to make it
happen I'm gonna stir those in see where I get and then just keep adding a little
bit of flour at a time until I reach that soft dough stage okay I think I've
got a soft dough have you never made them before and having never watched
anyone make them before it's kind of hard to tell based on the directions but
the next direction is to roll out and fry in hot lard so I've got a pot of hot
lard going it's three hundred and forty-five degrees Fahrenheit right now
and we'll see if that's hot enough kind of in the right spot and I've got a
little bit of flour in the bench I've got a doughnut cutter I'm going to keep
that in the flour I'm going to put this out onto the bench and we'll roll it out
and see what happens
this is going to make a lot more Donuts than I really want
and into the hot oil and I'm going to assume that when they float to the top
they are done so I don't do a rack to drain and cool my Donuts why I don't
know don't forget excited just yet I had high
hopes for these molasses donuts they look good well they look I don't know
that I'm looking at they look kind of weird they do look kind of weird so this
recipe has no leavening agent at all there's no baking soda baking powder no
yeast okay so is it like a cookie I don't they're not they don't look very
appetizing okay oh yeah they look really wrinkly
why'd you look really wrinkly there they don't react like any doughnut I've ever
had now this one this may be exactly what they're supposed to be okay hmm
there are a chewy molasses danger mm-hmm molasses and ginger and I would not call
them a doughnut no it's like a deep-fried gingerbread mm-hmm I think if
you had a more ginger yeah it's like a chewy soft to eat gingerbread ii thing
so yeah for those of you aren't supposed to eat gingerbread coz it's too hard
is it I'm would I'm still gonna have a problem
with these like I did with the doughnuts I like molasses and ginger together and
I think this is this with a cup of tea would still be absolutely fabulous of
course we say that about a lot of things right oh let's have a cup of tea but
dunking these would be great I think if you sell them as Donuts though this is
not a toner they're gonna be a lot of sad people if you're looking for that
light fluffy Krispy Kreme no doughnut this is this is a heavy cake heavy thick
yeah almost more like loaf I get like a it's got the same kind of texture like a
banana loaf or a zucchini love kind of thing to it right so except in small
it's got a lot of flavor doesn't look very nice
now hold on it's like that could play part partly us as well I'm not I don't
some it's our inability to actually just you
know it didn't say how much our to put in and so I ended up with a dough that
was probably too wet I might have been able to put more flour in but I was
treading that line between not enough and too much flour might have made it
really stiff mm-hmm yeah maybe it was supposed to be less flour maybe it was
supposed to be really soft and gooey hmm now I never would have gotten off the
bench okay what do I know I wasn't here mm-hmm
okay so there you go um be very sure this is what you're looking for yeah be
very sure this is what you're looking for it's a good experiment I will agree
that not everyone's going to like this yeah it's a good sort of peek behind the
curtain of what was going on in 1915 there's probably a reason I've never
heard of this there are probably people out there who still have these regularly
because we often hear from pockets of people around Canada in the United
States that say that never went away from us our family still makes them
really still makes them so if you are in that group of people please let us know
and you know what I did wrong or maybe there's exactly the disposable as we
said I like them cuz I like molasses I like ginger got cake I'm good with that
yeah okay so all right thanks for stopping by
see again soon I wholeheartedly like these okay they're just not what I
expected so you're not gonna eat them then so they're all for me they are all
for you