Who Needs Donuts?

When You've Got Love

Dec 13, 2024

The best book discovery of my boys’ childhood has been the book Who Needs Donuts by Mark Alan Stamaty (tragically out of print). It is a deeply weird and awesome picture book about a little boy named Sam who goes to a big city and makes the acquaintance of a doughnut seller named Mr. Bikferd. When Mr. Bikferd falls in love with a woman named Pretzel Annie and runs away with her, leaving Sam his doughnut wagon, he yells out “Who needs donuts when you’ve got love?” as he departs. But Sam soon gets the answer to this question when an old woman he knows is trapped by a coffee flood in a basement. Sam comes to her rescue by dumping his cart of donuts into the flooding room, the coffee is absorbed by the donuts and the old woman’s life is saved. The black-and-white pen illustrations are bonkers, incredibly detailed with a million things to discover, and the story is just weird enough to captivate children again and again. Also the book is an absolute delight to read out loud, making it a winner for everyone involved. Even though my boys have both outgrown picture books, they love this book so much that they still pore over it at times. For a time, Hugo drew landscapes of tiny detailed people just like Stamaty does. If you are lucky enough to come across it anywhere, BUY IT IMMEDIATELY and give it to a child you know.

Anyway, months ago, I came down with a craving for doughnuts. Not yeasted doughnuts, but cake doughnuts, or old-fashioneds, as they are known in some parts. These kinds of doughnuts don’t exist in Berlin; here, doughnuts are always yeasted and only available at certain times of the year. (In a mystery I can’t quite unravel, even Dunkin’ Donuts only sells their yeasted doughnuts in Europe, not their cake doughnuts. Why?) If I wanted to eat one, I would have to make it myself.

I put out the call to my Instagram followers. Did anyone have a family recipe for cake doughnuts they’d be generous enough to share? Two people did, sending me snapshots of their family recipe cards, the recipe jotted down in beautiful handwriting.

Nora

’s recipe came from her Great-Aunt Helen and required a whopping 8 cups of flour. Karen’s came from her Pennsylvania Dutch mother-in-law. I mean, could I have asked for two better pedigrees for homemade cake doughnuts? No, I could not.

Now the issue was, when would I make them? I wanted one cake doughnut, not eight cups worth! I filed the recipes away on the back burner. Then, in early November, after the election, when the world seemed bleak and all I wanted to do was go inward and gather my community around me and show the people I love how much I love them, I was reading Katherine Martinko’s newsletter where she mentioned the doughnut party she throws every Halloween. In that moment, I knew what I wanted to do. I would make both recipes, maybe even two batches each, and invite a whole bunch of friends over to eat them. Who needs donuts? WE DO.

Because of the set-up of our apartment, I couldn’t quite invite everyone to crowd into my kitchen to help me make the doughnuts. (Also, I’m an alpha cook who has a hard time concentrating on what I’m doing if someone is talking to me and inviting people into my kitchen WHILE I AM BUSY is my worst nightmare.) So rather than have people come over and glaze the finished doughnuts while I fried more, I decided to just serve the doughnuts plain, or dusted with confectioners’ sugar, or rolled in cinnamon sugar, all things I could do myself, in advance. The morning of the doughnut party, I made two batches of doughnuts (one of Great-Aunt Helen’s, one of Pennsylvania Dutch mother-in-law’s), but left all the ingredients out and the countertop floured, in case I needed to make another batch later.

The deal with cake doughnuts is that the batter, which is basically a cake batter leavened with baking powder/soda, not an enriched bread dough leavened with yeast, is very soft and floppy. You have to somehow roll it out on a floured work surface and then cut out doughnuts with a cutter. As you can imagine, rolling out cake batter isn’t easy. What worked for me was putting a big pile of flour on the surface, then scraping out a portion of batter at a time. Using a bench scraper, I sort of folded and mashed the smallish portion of batter with enough flour that I could get it to not be sticky anymore, while also not overflouring the dough to the point of toughness. This sounds complicated, but it wasn’t so bad. Don’t be afraid of using a lot of flour, but also move quickly. Working in portions also meant that while the donuts fried, I could roll out more, rather than doing all the rolling at the beginning (though if you have a big enough work surface, I suppose this could work too).

I had one cutter with fluted edges that I’m pretty sure was meant for Linzer-type cookies, not doughnuts, but it actually worked perfectly, stamping out rings and producing little holes. As messy as the rings and holes look in the photo above, the boiling oil smoothed away most of the imperfections.

Once the oil was at the right temperature (a candy thermometer that you can leave in the pot is key), I carefully dropped the rings and holes into the oil. I used a very large pot and about 3 liters of oil to start and never cooked more than five doughnuts at once (or about 10 holes). The actual frying only took a few minutes. Then I used my spider to take out the doughnuts, letting the oil drip off for a moment and then transferring them to a cooling rack that I’d placed over a baking sheet. Once the doughnuts were no longer scalding to touch, I plopped them in a bowl of cinnamon sugar and turned them a few times or in a bowl of confectioner’s sugar (this was messy—I think I’d recommend dusting them with sifted confectioner’s sugar instead). As the frying went on, I sometimes added a bit more oil to the pot. In total, I had five liters of oil on hand and I think I used a little less than that.

Once the doughnuts were completely cooled, I piled them onto all the biggest plates I had and arrayed them on the dining room table. People had wanted to know what they could bring to the doughnut party, so I asked them to bring thermoses of their favorite things to drink, like coffee or tea or hot chocolate, so that we wouldn’t have to prepare hot drinks on top of everything else. After all, every available surface of the kitchen was colonized with flour and buttermilk and that enormous pot of boiling oil. For simplicity’s sake, I bought paper plates and paper napkins and paper cups. This was no time for china.

It was a lovely party. Busy, to be sure, and crowded and the cinnamon-sugar donuts disappeared faster than the other ones, so I had to head back to the kitchen mid-party to make another batch, which also disappeared swiftly. In the end, I think I made somewhere between 80 and 90 donuts, not including the holes, and there were zero leftover. It was such a fun and cozy afternoon and I loved having the house full of people. December is such a whirlwind and people are often double and triple booked, and things can feel overwhelming and full. What better, then, to have a cozy afternoon with friends, a freshly made doughnut and a hot drink in hand?

I highly recommend having a doughnut party for your community - and am so grateful to Nora and Karen for sharing their family recipes! I’ve included them below, along with my metric conversions.

Great-Aunt Helen Reyser’s Cake Doughnuts
From Nora @culinaryclarinetist
Makes about 43 doughnuts and 46 doughnut holes

600 grams / 3 cups sugar
113 grams / 8 tbsp butter
4 eggs
1 kilo / 8 cups flour
35 grams / 8 tsps baking powder
1 tsp salt
500 ml / 2 cups milk
1 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
Freshly grated nutmeg
Vegetable oil for frying (2 to 3 liters)
Powdered sugar for coating, optional

1. Beat together the sugar and butter, then beat in each egg individually until creamy.

2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Mix the vanilla into the milk.

3. Beat the flour mixture into the butter mixture, alternating with the milk mixture, until smooth.

4. Roll out on a generously floured surface, cut out doughnuts and fry in oil that is around 190°C/375-380°F. Doughnuts should be deep brown on both sides.

Pennsylvania Dutch Cake Donuts
From Karen vanRietschoten Franklin
Makes about 20 donuts and holes

28 grams / 2 tbsp soft unsalted butter
200 grams / 1 cup sugar
2 eggs
177 ml / 3/4 cup buttermilk
438 grams / 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/3 tsp cinnamon
OR
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Vegetable oil for frying
Cinnamon-sugar for coating

Beat the butter and sugar together, then beat in the eggs thoroughly.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices.

Whisk the vanilla, if using, into the buttermilk.

Beat the flour and buttermilk into the egg mixture alternately, finishing with the buttermilk.

Knead 5 or 6 times on generously floured surface. Roll out to 1/3-inch thick and cut out the doughnuts. Let rest for 20 minutes.

Fry the donuts until golden brown on both sides. The cooking oil should be at least 3 to 4 inches deep and 190°C/375-380°F.

Some Housekeeping

This Sunday December 15th at 1:00 EST (7:00 pm CET), I will be teaching a virtual cooking class with Milk Street all about my favorite potato dishes from Classic German Cooking. We will make Bratkartoffeln (fried potatoes with bacon and onions, the smell of which regularly wafts down Berlin streets), Kartoffelgulasch, a cozy one-pot potato-paprika stew which is one of Max’s favorite recipes from the book, and Eingebrannte Erdäpfel, a sleeper hit if I ever saw one, creamy braised sliced potatoes with caraway and sour cream. It’s going to be a very busy class! I’ll be teaching from my mother’s beautiful kitchen, so you can see some glimpses of her wonderful collections of wooden Springerle forms, vintage tiles and other treasures. Tickets and more info can be found here. If you can’t make the time, Milk Street will send you a recording of the class. The code GERMANCOOKING will give you 15% off the ticket price.
On Monday December 16th at 18:30, I will be in conversation with Ben Mims at Hallesches Haus. This is a public, non-ticketed event. Ben’s beautiful and comprehensive new book on cookies, Crumbs, came out on the same day as Classic German Cooking! We will have a conversation about our books, Christmas baking, German cookies and more. Then there will be an opportunity for some audience Q&A and we’ll sign books. A great opportunity for getting some holiday shopping done! I’m really looking forward to seeing all you locals there.
Finally, if you are giving the gift of any of my books this holiday season, thank you! Remember, I will mail signed and personalized adhesive book plates anywhere in the world, free of charge. Just send me an email at luisa.weiss@gmail.com with your request.