These doughnuts (or should I say bonenuts lol no, that was terrible) were a total disaster to make! The batter was easy enough to mix- just a 1/4 box of chocolate cake mix, some Dr Pepper (I KNOW, I HAVE A PROBLEM) and some black food colouring to spookify it a little. But when I went to scoop it into the pastry bag, disaster! I’d used a heavy Pyrex bowl and it was hard to hold up and I sort of half-dropped it onto the pastry bag (which was propped up in a cup). Batter went everywhere and I had to call Taylor over to help me.
Then, while I was piping the first batch into my mini doughnut machine, the end of the pastry bag BLEW OUT. The coupler burst right out of the bag and again, batter went everywhere! I was able to finish filling the machine with spoonfuls of batter (albeit sloppily) and while it was cooking I scooped the remaining batter from the burst pastry bag into a smaller one. However, I don’t have any tips for the small bag with a big enough opening so I had to use a fancy decorating tip, which dispensed weirdly and I overfilled the machine, which made another mess.
HOWEVER. In the end it was all worth it, because look at how they turned out.
ARE YOU KIDDING THESE ARE GREAT! The bone sprinkles are from a spooky Halloween decorating set I bought in September and I FINALLY made a successful glaze! The trick is to use EIGHT TONS of icing sugar and just a teeny bit of milk, plus some white food colouring to make it more opaque. Perfecto! Too bad I wasted so much batter with all my mess-making and disasters because I only got twelve doughnuts out of all my work.
My regular doughnut tester was being recalcitrant about having her picture taken (quelle surprise) so I enlisted Taylor’s help. His verdict?
Super delicious!
Recently I found myself in a Halloween funk. I didn’t put up any decorations or carve any pumpkins, I didn’t have any Halloween plans and I put off making my costume until the night before I had to wear it. Earlier this week I decided it was time to GET OUT of my funk, so on the advice of my e-friend Brooke, last night I invited some friends over to carve jack o’lanterns, eat Halloween treats and watch Hocus Pocus.
Taylor picked up four pumpkins after he got home from work at 1:30 and I spent the afternoon making an awesome three and a half hour long spooky music playlist.
Taylor and Jenn scooped and scraped out all the pumpkins since Sym, Rich and I find it too disgusting. Four pumpkins hold a lot of guts! I carved mine, and I also ended up carving Taylor’s for him since he was delirious from being up for 30 hours and I was worried he was going to cut his thumb off/smash his pumpkin with a hammer. Jenn and Sym teamed up, and Rich did his with a cordless drill!
I did mine with cookie cutters. For the big stars I made an imprint on the pumpkin with the cutter and then cut it out with a small knife, but for the little ones I just pounded the cutter right through with a rubber mallet! So easy.
Taylor wanted to do the Android logo but he made it too small and it got messed up, so I printed out a bigger one and carved it on another side. I didn’t do a great job (I was a few glasses of wine in at this point) but I think it still turned out okay. I was going to do the eyes with little pieces of pumpkin rind on toothpicks, but then I found these crystal-tipped ~party picks~ in the cupboard so I used them instead.
Jenn and Sym did a cat and also utilized my crystal-tipped party pick technique for the eyes.
Rich didn’t want to carve a pumpkin because he said he lacks skills. This one would have been nearly impossible to carve traditionally anyway because the rind is like, four inches thick! I had the idea to do a pattern of holes with a drill, and after a couple of test drills I made him take over. He did a series of vertical lines and when one of my LED fake candles is flickering inside it, it kind of looks like the Matrix. Really!
It was really fun, and definitely helped to launch me out of my funk! Today I’m in a great mood- I had the bite on my replacement filling from two weeks ago fixed at 8am and now I’m no longer in horrible pain, I’m going to spend the day making decorations for Sym’s birthday party on Friday and I finally found a bag of my favorite Halloween candy: ROCKETS (I think these have a different name in the US).
Every year I eat a billion of these and spend the first half of November with a gross, raw tongue. IT’S WORTH IT THOUGH.
Rockets are called Smarties in the US. I go into a rant whenever I see them about how REAL Smarties are like M&Ms but better.
That’s what I thought!
i love those!! we call them smarties here. i get so excited seeing them in my halloween bag haha