Snow storm prepping

While everyone is out swarming grocery stores and doing their best doomsday prep impression for the impending Snowmageddon '14, I figured I'd get in the spirit of it too.   However, rather than buy enough toilet paper, water and batteries to last for a year,  I'd spend my time baking something that would make the snow more bearable.  Before I talk about what that is, let me preface it with this:

Few years ago I got the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook and fell in love with it.  The imagination and innovation that Christina Tosi shows in that book gives me something to aspire to.  I mean to come up with the apple pie cake that contains all aspects of an apple pie, but in cake form...  What the what?  I spent days trying out different recipes for cookies, pies, cakes and so on  (and the cornflake cookie, compost cookie and banana cream pie are among my favorites so make those sometime).  One of the more interesting things that I have fallen in love with is what they call a volcano.  It's wonderfully seasoned scalloped potatoes and caramelized onions wrapped up in bread dough that is topped off with cheese and baked.  It's like being hugged by grandma.

So, that's how I am going to prep for this end of the world snowstorm...with volcanoes.

Going nuts for doughnuts

Sure, St. Louis is known for things like gooey butter cakes, fried ravioli, and so on, but to me there will always be something else that stands out.  Granted you can find it anywhere pretty much, but it's home to me and was part of my childhood.  My grandmother would visit two of the local bakeries and get different things, bread, coffee cake, but the one that we all wanted was the sugar doughnut holes.  Little, simple, but so good.

When I realized I wanted a bakery, I knew I had to have doughnuts in some form.  Well, not any form.  Honestly, I wanted what I grew up with.  But, like many others, I thought it'd be more work than it's worth, and you have to deal with hot oil and frying them.  It'd be much easier to just do a baked doughnut.  It's not the same though.

I went online and looked up recipes and found some that had pretty good reviews and that gave me a place to start with.  I made my first batch, and it was great and the people I shared them with loved them as well.

So, I was sitting here earlier today thinking about what I could do for a topic and I was like "Duh, doughnuts."  and here we go...