Cider Mill Doughnuts

It’s apple season up in the Midwest and when I think back on the apple seasons of my past, I immediately think about cider mills.

My favorite cider mill of all time is The Franklin Cider Mill in Franklin, Michigan.  If you’re ever in the neighborhood (between Labor Day and Thanksgiving) stop by!

  Driving out to Franklin and grabbing a bag of warm, cinnamon spiced cake doughnuts and a quart of freshly pressed apple cider was a family tradition.  We’d grab a spot on the lawn and share a paper bag full of warm, fresh doughnuts and Dixie cups of cider, while we watched the ducks play in the stream and enjoyed the cool, crisp weather.  It’s something I cherished at the time, because it was only available for a brief few months each year, but I never realized how truly special the experience was until I moved to a part of the country that *gasp!* isn’t big on apples.

My children have never been to a cider mill and, although this may sound silly to you, it breaks my heart.  As far as I’m concerned, cider mills are one of fall’s old-fashioned, simple pleasures and should be enjoyed by everyone!  Earlier this week, I saw a friend’s post on Facebook about her family’s trip to a cider mill and that got me thinking.  If I can’t take my kids to a cider mill, why not try to bring the cider mill (minus all of the heavy equipment) to my house?

I decided surprise the girls with homemade doughnuts and “fresh from Publix” cider for breakfast.

Once I decided to do this,  I was determined to make a good doughnut, but I was well aware that anything I made couldn’t possibly be as good as what I remembered.  I also didn’t want to make a recipe that could feed a small nation…just my family.  Keeping this in mind, I scoured the internet for a traditional cider mill doughnut recipe that made a reasonable amount of doughnuts and I found quite a few!  It appears that I’m not the only one out there missing this part of my childhood.

Almost every recipe I found started off with reducing down some apple cider that would, eventually, be added to the dough.

  Reducing the cider down from 1-cup to 1/4-cup concentrates the flavor.  When it was reduced down, it was almost like apple cider syrup.

While the reduced cider cooled, I put together my dough.  This is a simple, old-fashioned recipe, and took just a few minutes to put together  The original recipe called for cinnamon and nutmeg.  I am not a big nutmeg fan, so I substituted some pumpkin pie spice.  There’s a hint of nutmeg in pumpkin pie spice, but it’s not overpowering.

Once the dough was made, the recipe told me to turn it out onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet that was “sprinkled generously with flour”.  I cannot stress this enough.  “Generously” is an understatement.  Make sure that the cookie sheet is well floured because this is one sticky, sticky dough.

I sprinkled more flour on top, floured my hands and flattened the dough out onto the cookie sheet.  I liked this recipe because it didn’t involve a rolling pin.  The recipe called for the dough pressed out to a thickness of 1/2 inch and when I pressed it into the cookie sheet, it was perfect.

At this point, the dough went into the freezer for about 20 minutes to firm up.  This gave me enough time to clean up the mess I’d made…before I made more mess.

After the dough came out of the freezer, it was time to cut the doughnut shapes out.  I don’t have a doughnut cutter.  When I make these again, I’ll be sure I get one.  I used a 3-4 inch round cookie cutter and, in an attempt to be festive, a mini fall leaf cookie cutter to cut the middles out. (The attempt at being festive fell flat once the donuts were fried, but it was worth a shot.  The holes in the middle should have been much smaller.)  I placed these cut out doughnuts, leaf-shaped holes and some regular holes I’d cut out from the extra dough on another parchment paper lined and floured cookie sheet.

At this point in the recipe, the dough needs to be refrigerated for at least 30 minutes.  I covered the cookie sheet with foil and put them in the fridge overnight.  My goal was to surprise the girls in the morning.  Plus, I didn’t want to mess with the whole recipe first thing in the morning before I’d had enough coffee.  Who are we kidding?  That could get really ugly.  So, the tough part was done and I waited until morning to finish.

In the morning, after brewing some coffee (first things first, after all), I heated up some oil for the doughnuts.  If you are going to make these, I highly suggest using a candy thermometer.  Deep frying is an exact science.  The oil had to stay as close to 350* as possible for optimum frying.  If the oil is too cool, the doughnuts would soak up the oil.  If too hot, they’d burn on the outside and be raw on the inside.  Keep the thermometer in the oil as you fry and keep an eye on it as you fry.

As I kept a close eye on the doughnuts, I made a quick glaze that the recipe suggested and also mixed together some cinnamon and sugar.  I fried up the doughnuts two at a time.  After the doughnuts cooled just a bit and drained on some paper towels, I dipped the tops in the glaze and sprinkled them with the cinnamon sugar.

(See?  They needed smaller holes in the middle.)

As for the holes, I just tossed them in some cinnamon sugar.

Were these the doughnuts I remembered?  No.  I don’t know if anything I made at home would measure up, to be honest.  For one thing, the real thing is THAT good.  For another, I’m not a mass producing perfect doughnut making machine.  These are a pretty good spiced doughnut, though, and the kids really got a kick out of them.

Someday, I’ll take my kids to a real cider mill so they can experience it for themselves.  Until then, they seemed quite happy to wake up to the substitute, and that’s really all that matters.

HAPPY FALL!

CIDER MILL DOUGHNUTS

Adapted from a recipe found in The New York Times