Christmas Donuts

I know that I am a lucky gal to have a husband who loves to bake.  A few weeks ago (I've been waiting until it was closer to Christmas and thus more appropriate) Brett cracked open his trusty Taste of Home Baking Book and found a recipe for no-fry donuts.  Brett loves donuts.  He comes from the land of Dunkin' Donuts (which I think means anywhere other than Southern California) and always looks forward to visiting Chicago so he can get his fill of them.  I can appreciate a good donut, but for some reason they always make me sick to my stomach so I tend to stay away.  Anyway, I watched TV almost the entire time Brett was in the kitchen working.  Hey, sometimes I just don't feel like cooking!

As many of you know, Brett is the yeast specialist in our household so, not surprisingly, these were yeast donuts.  He made the dough, let it rise, rolled it out, and instead of going for a traditional donut shape, he used cookie cutters to make snowmen and Christmas trees.

The shapes had to rise again and then were finally ready to bake- not fry.

After baking, they smelled amazing, but they were not quite done yet.  This is where I got interested because my nose was telling me it was almost time to eat.  I watched as Brett made the glaze and used tongs to dunk the tops of the donuts.  (The suggestion of using tongs was my only contribution to this project.)  He used plain glaze for the snowmen and then dyed it green for the trees.  His hope was that the glaze would dry white on the snowmen, but he was disappointed to find out that it did not.  When it came time to do the trees the glaze kept stiffening so he kept adding water.  That is why some of the trees are a lighter green than others.  

Finally!  Time to eat!  While these donuts were not as light as those of Dunkin', they were still delicious.  They were not cake-like either so I'll put them somewhere in between.  The best parts were that they had a hint of nutmeg which is one of my favorite Christmas flavors, and they did not give me a stomachache.

By the time they were finished it was quite late, so I limited myself to three and just crossed my fingers that they would still be tasty the next day.  (We always seem to have issues with storing our yeast products.)  However, the next day I put one in the microwave for about 10 seconds and it was just as delicious as the first day.