Apple Sauce Donuts and 170 Miles

We had a wonderful, relaxing weekend!  Usually I spend lots of time in my kitchen, doing laundry, cleaning etc.  I did do some cooking to start off Tony’s birthday on Saturday morning.

I had an idea to make donuts – I’ve been seeing pumpkin donuts everywhere lately, but I have yet to stock my fall/winter pantry with canned pumpkin.  FYI, Aldi has the cheapest canned pumpkin – every day price is .69 cents by me!   So I decided to see if I could sub in apple sauce for the pumpkin.

I also liked that linked pumpkin donut recipe because you could just mix, roll, punch out the donuts and fry – literally you can have donuts ready in about 15 minutes, which is about how long it takes our deep fryer to come to temperature.

Apple Sauce Glazed Donuts

• makes 18 donuts and holes – each one:  209 calories, .8 fat, 46 carbs, 1 fiber and 3.7 protein

Ingredients:

• 4 cups flour
• 1.25 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup skim milk
• 3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

For the glaze:

• 1.5 cups powdered sugar
• 1.5 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon sugar free pancake syrup (or maple syrup)

I put all the dry ingredients into a big bowl, then whisked to combine.  And because I am a lazy baker, I just added everything else to the flour mixture, and mixed until combined.  It’s going to be a kind of loose dough, put the dough on your floured counter and add enough so that you can cut out the donuts – I used about 1/3 cup of flour. 

I used a biscuit cutter for the donut, then a shot glass for the middle.  Deep fry for 1-2 minutes per side.  Mix the powdered sugar, milk and syrup together, and after the donuts cool for a minute, dip each one in the glaze.  I ended up tossing the holes in a cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Here is what I learned though.  I cut out half the donuts and then plugged in my deep fryer.  It took about 10 minutes to come to temperature.  By then, the liquid in the applesauce kind of leaked through, and I had to start all over – I couldn’t even get them off the counter!  It was quick work, and worth it.  I would consider this more of a cake donut, but really delicious.  I ended up cooking up some breakfast link sausage on the side – and that was breakfast!  Turns out I heart donuts! (and find them insulin worthy!!)

But because we ate so late (around 10:30) by the time lunch came around, Tony wasn’t hungry for lunch – we had planned on going out for sushi, but found out that our favorite place closes at 2:00 on Saturdays for lunch.  So we ended up hitting up the grocery store to get a steak for dinner and snacks for football Sunday.

We split this steak (still had about 1/3 of it leftover!) and had baked potatoes and zucchini on the side.  I made a compound butter with fresh rosemary and baked fresh garlic – um, the rosemary butter was amazeballs on both the steak and the baked potato!

And per his request, I made my carrot cake with cinnamon cheese cream frosting.  I normally make this in a 9×13 pan, but decided to make a two layer cake.   Tony declared it the best carrot cake he’s ever had!  For good reason – 1. there is 1.5 cups of oil that emulsified with the carrots, and 2. there isn’t a lot of frosting so the cake really stands out. 

Again, not going to win any blue ribbons with my cake frosting skills, but this was delicious.

And our recent Sunday tradition where Tony makes me breakfast was alive and well yesterday – creamy eggs, hashbrowns and toast – thanks Tony!

Tony requested Hooters wings and shrimp for his football food yesterday.  Our local Hooters actually just turned into a Chik-fil-A.  It’s been opened a month and its always swamped so we haven’t tried it yet – not sure I’ve ever had Chik-fil-A before!

Here is the recipe for the copy cat Hooters Chicken wings.   I didn’t take any pictures of the wings because I did the shrimp first since they don’t take long at all – I used the same flour mixture from the Hooters wings – there was plenty.

And so far, I am in the lead for our football pics this week!  I plan to gloat about it all week.

So my blog friend and friend in real life Jacky (she always runs into my sister, but I do plan on a meet up this fall!) is running the New York marathon!   She’s six weeks away from the big race, and she still has 170 miles on her training schedule before then.

Remember when I wanted to move 100 miles for my August challenge?  Well, bronchitis kicked me in the balls and that challenge never came to fruition.  Six weeks takes me all the way through Halloween!  So to give my friend Jacky support, I plan on moving 170 miles in the next six weeks – it breaks it down to just over 28 miles a week.  So I definitely see some long bike rides in my future.  I know you’ll do great Jacky!

Does anyone else want to join me in this challenge?  Just leave me a comment below or send me an email at mybizzykitchen@gmail.com – I’ll see if my friends at Chobani will offer up another gift box for everyone who meets their six week challenge.

Alright, I have to scoot – I finally am going to see my plastic surgeon at lunch for my “abnormal” mole removal.  I never thought I’d step foot in a plastic surgeons office in my life!  I am assuming the removal is going to be out patient, and today is just our initial consult – wish me luck!

Make it a great day!