Doughnuts doughnuts doughnuts

While the kids are I were talking about doughnuts the past few weeks, we made these felt doughnuts. I got the idea for these here on skiptomylou. I think it's important for the kids to know how to use a needle and thread, Nathaniel can already sew on a button, he pretty much made his whole doughnut with minimal assistance from me on the sewing machine. We didn't use the colored thread for sprinkles, instead we used plastic tubular beads.

Cutting them out, we used a bowl and shot glass:



Sewing on the beads:



Finished:



We are in the process of making a cardboard drive-thru window for our police car- won't these be cute for the officer to order? (You won't see this until after the summer!)

Something else I've been doing is when I do get the energy and time to do a whole theme on a letter or topic, I make a fabric letter for them. Did you ever have the balloon letter people show up at your classroom when you were young? I used to love having them show up and be able to color them. Next, I want to make the actual matching coloring sheets, but for now, here is our D:



Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Why doughnuts? Check out what we've been seeing in shops here, I'm not sure what the obsession with doughnuts is here, but it's hard not to want to own this cute doughnut stuff- we even got our "nephew dog" a donut chew toy. Shown below are only a few things, there are sooo much more.

Hello kitty shaped donut cell phone charm (what will they think of next?):



Board games:




Kids' baking kits:



Claw machine prizes:



And my absolute favorite:





Do you want to come take our doughnut for a dunk?

Field trip to KRISPY KREME

Yes, I know I wrote about going to the new Osaka Krisy Kreme before, but guess what??? This time, we actually got donuts!!!

Since the kids and I first attempted to go to Krispy Kreme, we have been talking about donuts. We made our own donuts. We have read one of our favorite books, The Donut Chef by Bob Staake over and over, and we have been working on a special donut project (to be seen later this week). Now, it was time to see them being made in large quantities and eat them!

When we arrived, it was 11:45 and we could see a man holding a sign saying 1 hour, which I assumed meant the wait time. He quickly pointed to an intersection down the street and told me to go there and turn left to get a number to wait in line. (The Krispy Kreme is on the corner of a VERY busy intersection, so they have you go down the street to line up and wait on a much much wider sidewalk, then you are told when you can leave that line to the shorter line in front of the store to wait longer.) There is no problem doing this here, having a line split up by two whole city blocks, I think in the US it would be a problem.

I got to the other line, which wasn't bad, and I didn't mind waiting, neither did the kids, the weather was nice, and there's always lots of people watching. As we were standing in line, I was wondering why I hadn't received my ticket yet, when I overheard the officer and the employee talking in japanese that neither of them could speak English. I stood there trying to make eye contact and politely said that I could speak some Japanese, they were so relieved. I knew enough to understand that I could choose 2 dozen glazed or a dozen glazed and a dozen assorted. I told them the later of the two and he kept saying something to me that I didn't get. I pointed again to the picture on the sign and he handed me four tickets, number 72, 73, 74, and 96- I'm still not sure why the third number was so different.

About ten minutes later, a woman wearing a Krispy Kreme uniform, escorted by this line officer came up to me.



They were like "here, here she is!"- referring to me. She asked me what did I want and I told her 2 dozen, 1 assorted, 1 glazed and she said "Okay you need different tickets". Next thing, I exchange my white tickets for green tickets, same thing, three chronological and one different. She took me out of line and walked me right into the store, can I say this lady was my hero.



There were four registers, all EMPTY! We went right in, ordered our donuts and paid! While I was paying an employee came over and gave us each a free hot glazed, and they were so delicious, well worth the wait.



As it turns out, the one hour wait was to choose your own assortment. Seriously, I don't mind waiting either way, but when you can go in and choose right away with no wait for a preboxed versus wait an hour to choose your own, the choice does seem obvious to me. Well, the kids and I went outside to watch the donuts being made while eating our freebies and the others still waiting in line just stared and drooled.

The kids enjoyed this part, where the donuts got their glaze: (pardon the photo, I snuck in between people and there was quite a glare on the window at noon that day)



But in all honesty, I think their favorite part was getting these hats:

Homemade doughnuts

Since we couldn't get a dozen at the real Krispy Kreme, we tried our hand at making our own at home. I did not search online for the Krispy Kreme recipe, just a doughnut recipe. I found one on allrecipes that looked good and had been reviewed by a lot of people. It turns out, upon searching for Krispy Kreme's recipe today, it is the same one. I changed the glaze recipe though.

For the doughnuts:

1 pack yeast (1 TBSP)
1/8 cup warm water
3/4 cup lukewarm milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1/6 cup shortening
2 1/2 cup flour

For the glaze (my recipes):

vanilla:
2 TBSP butter
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2-4 TBSP milk (however much you want to reach the desired consistency)

chocolate:
2 TBSP butter
2 TBSP cocoa powder (I like Hershey's)
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2-4 TBSP milk

strawberry:
2 TBSP strawberry quik
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2-3 TBSP milk


Put the yeast in bowl of mixer with warm water and sugar, let sit 5 minutes to activiate. Add in milk, salt, shortening, egg, and 1 1/2 cups flour. Mix together, then slowly add remaining flour until mixture forms a nice soft ball and is no longer sticking to the sides of the bowl. Add more flour if needed. Knead for about 5 minutes. Grease a bowl and put the dough in it and set in a warm place to rise until doubled (about 1-1.5 hours). Punch the dough down, roll out onto a floured suface to about 1/2 inch thickness. Use a cutter to cut out the doughnuts.



Heat oil in a pan to 170' over medium heat. Place the cut out doughnuts in the pan to cook, approximately 45-90 seconds, you will see the bottom browning and they will start to float. Flip them and cook the same time. Remove from pan, place on a paper towel to soak off oil. Add glaze as desired.

Here's the glaze we made:



The kids enjoyed choosing the colors and flavors to decorate their doughnuts. Even Dave was impressed at how good looking they were. We used our ABC cookie cutters, and they had fun spelling out words and choosing which letter they wanted to eat.





Note: the recipe I used was double what I made, but I think doughnuts don't taste that great leftover, so I didn't want to have too many leftover. We made about 20 with this batch.

You can put the cooking oil in a jar once cooled to use again, or dispose of in an old can (DO NOT POUR THE OIL DOWN THE DRAIN!!!!!!!!!!)