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Once You DIY A Doughnut, You Don’t Go Back

March 2, 2017
an easy and delicious recipe for biscuit dough donuts

Deep-frying is not my forte. I've only ever done it once, actually, when I made fish 'n' chips - white-hot oil has just always struck me as a substance I should stay far, far away from. But when I'm presented with an opportunity to learn how to whip up homemade doughnuts from my friend and RG contributor Mollie, I'm obviously going to say yes. First, because Mollie alerted me to the fact that she inherited her love of deep-frying from her great-grandmother Big Momma, and any recipe even tangentially associated with a woman named "Big Momma" is clearly going to be a delicious one. But also because these doughnuts are made using pre-made biscuit dough. Which means they take about five minutes.

Let me say that again, for emphasis: If you have these (pretty basic) ingredients handy, you can be eating homemade doughnuts in five minutes. And now that I have officially tasted doughnuts fresh from the oven (or...oil-pot), I get why some people skip Dunkin' Donuts in favor of DIY: the doughnuts you buy in stores can't even begin to compare to ones you eat seconds after they're made.

Oh, and if you have kids this is such a fun project (minus the boiling oil part) - just sit them down with toppings and slightly cooled doughnuts - and maybe a few dropcloths, depending on how much you like your furniture - and let them go crazy. Which they will. (I practically had to hose my daughter down before I'd let her get in my car at the end of all this.)

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Entertaining

10 Ideas For A Nautical-Themed Baby Shower

February 27, 2017

I spent 45% of my weekend on the phone with Apple Care, trying to figure out why my computer will not stop giving me the rainbow wheel of death (the answer is that it's officially time for a new one, which is obviously fabulous news), and 45% trying to restore our yard to something resembling its pre-bombogenesis condition (including the construction of a new fence and the removal of many, many sad-looking plants), but I did manage to escape for a minute to head over to my friend Brianna's baby shower, which was so lovely and adorable that I thought I'd share some shots here (with her permission, of course), plus a few more oceanside-inspired party ideas.

My friend Erin - Brianna's sister-in-law - made these cupcake toppers out of fondant and swears they're totally do-able. I think "totally doable" is probably a relative term here, but still: they're so cute they're worth the effort.

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Decor

Suburban Problems, Volume IXVII

February 20, 2017

These women definitely have great park strips.

When you grow up living in a New York City apartment, you do not think about things like the care and cultivation of of the "park strip" outside your front door (the part that isn't the sidewalk and isn't the street), as it is a spot most likely decorated with things like Diet Coke cans, and a stack of empty Chinese food cartons, and somebody's broken TV. You probably haven't even noticed it's there. You almost certainly have no idea who's taking care of it. And you definitely don't know the term "park strip."

As of two months ago, I know what a park strip is, because it turns out that in the suburbs, you own yours, and when it must be dealt with, it is you who must do the dealing. My park strip, for example, no longer really exists, as it was torn up by the city while they fixed the sewer line running down our street, and then they never came back. And charged me $3,500 for the pleasure. (Mmmmhmm you read that right. Apparently when the sewage from your entire street overflows into your driveway and you call the city to have them come fix it, they won't work on it unless the sewer access point for your property is within five feet of the street. So unless you want to continue accessorizing your front yard with your neighbors' poop, you will have to pay to relocate it. Home ownership, WHEE.)

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SWEETS

Easy (And Incredible) Lemon Curd

February 16, 2017

I have never come across a lemon curd recipe that I have not wanted to consume in massive, even inadvisable quantities. Even the kind of lemon curd that they use as filling in those little pies you can get at the deli for 99 cents forces me to make weird-ecstatic faces while I eat it (I tend to try to eat these pies in private).

That said, this particular lemon curd recipe, whipped up by Mollie and eaten almost entirely by yours truly, is ridiculous. It's the perfect combination of sweet and tart, and while we included a couple of suggestions for how to serve it below...honesty, you should probably just eat it straight from the jar. That's what I did, and I just have to say: it was a hell of a good decision on my part.

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