Grandma's breadboard is still fairly large as I remember it from my childhood. Grandma got married in 1895 so I would think this board is from that era. I've had it for over 50 years and it gives me fond memories of her making donuts, molasses cookies, and bread on it. No matter what she would make on that board, it turned out perfect. I can only hope for that.
For the longest time I have been wanting to make donuts with the donut cutter that was my grandma's. Maybe they will turn out as good as hers. I still can taste that cake dough with the hint of nutmeg and them covered with flavored sugar. She didn't put any other decorations on it...just cinnamon and sugar. I loved that taste even though I don't particularly like cinnamon.
I found the cutter...cleaned the dust off of it. The cutter must be as old as the cutting board. It is about three inches in diameter and has the removable "donut hole" cutter inside. There is a knobby wooden handle on top. Between the board and the cutter, that would make those two things 124 years old...and they still work! The rolling pin is new and about one third the age.
So, I find a recipe online for cake donuts that looked similar to grandma's. Pretty simple. I have all the ingredients assembled and I start to put them together. I didn't use my electric mixer because I wanted to do this like grandma would have. Everything went in fine, but the dough was very stiff and a little lumpy. I turned it out onto the board and did a little kneading to smooth it out. Well, that didn't work well at all. I didn't want to knead it too much to make the dough tough. I covered the dough with plastic wrap to let it rest a bit. At that time Bob came into the kitchen and saw me with my head in hand and frown on face.
Me being a little upset at the dough results, asked Bob to rescue me by helping out. He took the task of rolling out the dough and cutting the shapes. Meanwhile, I had the oil heating up in my stainless steel dutch oven with the thermometer in it. Grandma always used a cast iron dutch oven and never used a thermometer...but her donuts turned out great. I wasn't going to trust my instincts like she did hers.
The oil was hot, the donuts were cut, Bob was at the ready to drop the shapes into the oil. We decided to drop the leftover, odd shaped pieces of dough in first. That way we could judge how long to keep them in the hot oil. I got the cinnamon sugar ready for the first drop. All's looking good. The odd shaped pieces come out, I sugared them.... Bob and I taste tested the odd pieces and they tasted good. The dough was dense, but the taste was tolerable. Now for the rest of the donuts to be dropped. All's looking good. First batch came out. I sugared them. We were on a roll.
All the donuts and donut holes were done and sugared. They looked pretty good, too. Yet, something was wrong. They were smaller than I remember. They should have been larger like I remembered as a child. How could that be? I used the same cutter grandma did. Could it be that when you are little everything is big?
