Irving loves doughnuts. When our children were young I often made doughnuts of different kinds. It was fun making them, and everyone enjoyed eating them, but it's been decades since I've even thought of making them. I wasn't keen in deep-frying anything, truth to tell. It's why, when I make French fries to accompany fish for dinner on occasion, they're baked in the oven, on a cookie sheet with a minimum of oil to give them that deep crispness.

 

But several days ago when he was going through the Financial Post he read an article about Tim Horton's coffee chain, and one of the items they had removed from their menu, was something called 'Dutchies'.  There was an accompanying photograph, and they looked somewhat like doughnuts. Irving was curious about them, so since there wasn't a recipe for them with the article, I looked online and found one.

 

They're deep fried, of course. A type of doughnut we'd never heard of before, and because of popular acclaim, it seems they're returning to the Tim Horton menu. We both have a sweet tooth, but Irving's has magnified over the years. We both love breads of any kind; for me, the heavier-grain breads with lots of seeds, while Irving enjoys all kinds of sour dough breads and croissants.

I had a look at the recipe ingredients and thought I'd go ahead and make them today. I forgot what they were called, but remembered the ingredients; evidently they're considered a Canadian doughnut. So after breakfast I soaked a half-cup of raisins, and put together the dough. Consisting of yeast, honey, milk, an egg, flour, cinnamon and raisins. The recipe called for sugar, but I substituted honey. As for proportions, I never follow recipe directions, I just assess the ingredients and their logical amounts.

After the dough had rested and risen for about an hour, I used a tall-sided frypan with olive oil to a depth of about a half-inch or slightly more, and fried the dough I had first rolled into a log, then cut into fairly even pieces, and made the doughnuts, then dipped each one in an icing-sugar glaze, and they look fine, and undoubtedly will taste fine. As with all these things, they taste best the day they're made. And since there's just two of us taking one each, that leaves too many for another day and another day, and there will be wastage.

 

So of course to compensate for eating such tempting but extraneous-to-our-energy-needs food supplements, we went out with Jackie and Jillie for our usual tramp through the ravine. A tad on the cold side at -6C, but it will get much colder as winter progresses. No wind of any note was a help, and if we'd gone out earlier we would have had the benefit of the sun. Such as what manages to pierce the inner forest.

We'd gone out late, at four, so that as we progressed on the trails, dusk turned quickly darker until by the time we reached home after exiting the ravine, darkness had descended. The street is quiet. There is some residual snow, but we haven't had snowfall for over a week. Looks like this won't be a white Christmas here, after all.