Life's a Box of Donuts

This is a story of adventure, this is a story of loss, this is a story of love...for donuts.

I have loved donuts since that first donut I ate, which I’d like to say was a Long John probably around the age where it’s closeness to my name made it all the better.  Of course, I made that up, but the point is: donuts are delicious.

In high school, the time where I learned that I had a bit more control over my actions found me behind the wheel of a car headed to Dunkin Donuts on the way to friends late at night every few weeks.  Nighttime was key, especially the time when the workers magically transform your humble request for six donuts into 2 dozen thirty minutes before closing.

Living with four great friends senior year of college found me getting donuts when the task of whipping of French toast seemed like too much work.

But lately, my access to proper donuts has been nil.  Oh China, how you don’t really understand the world of baked/fried goods.  Sure, no one will fight your corner on the stir-fry or the sustainable way you eat so many parts of animals.  But China, I have to be honest with you, what you call donuts—not so great.

On Christmas, I found myself walking out of a Malaysian chain grocery with a sugar donut—the first decent one I had found.  In Hong Kong, I excitedly bought a donut to find it stuffed with red bean paste; bu yao.  So after years (and by years I mean two) of making cookies and cakes, I started watching Youtube recipes for Donuts.  Boy did it look easy!  “What had I never tried this before?”.  Sure frying can be dangerous, so I looked up baked donuts.

Excited, I bounced home, beaming that same smile I wore as a 5-year-old when genius ideas struck—cute, but I suspect always a bit unnerving for my parents. I watched an Aussie make baked donuts and I started mixing ingredients together.  During the 30 min chill time, I went for a run drooling over the though of homemade donuts.  I came back, opened the fridge, and took out the dough.

The dough, which smelled like vanilla and happiness, was quite sticky.  “All right,” I said.  I wasn’t about to give up.  I floured the counter and began to role out dough with parchment paper.  It stuck to the paper.  The dough stuck to parchment paper to the degree that the paper ripped and some of the dough ended up in the trash refusing to release itself from the paper.  I added more flour and the dough seemed better at first, and then returned to the degree of stickiness that bad bakers find in some strange circle of hell.

Frustrated, I washed my hands, leaving much dough glued on to my arm hair and texted Cynthia, a good friend.  She responded, but by this time I was again covered in dough.  Using my rather prominent nose, I dialed her.

“What do you mean extra flour can make things sticky?” I said, bent over a sticky mess.  Remembering recipes where one adds flour until desired consistency (for Giant Cinnamon rolls, etc.), I was not aware of this other property of flour.

But I was determined to make something!  I rolled out the dough with a wine bottle and found some circular objects in my house in true block-party-scavenger-hunt style.  I cut some shapes, though the dough still didn’t want to cooperate.  Eventually I had some strange shapes of dough on a tray in a toaster oven.  Some rolled by hand into circles, some cut, and some donut “holes”.

The oven smelled like a carnival—the unmistakable smell of funnel cakes filled the kitchen.  But when I checked on the donuts, they looked nothing like donuts.  They didn’t brown, they rose strangely, but they did smell wonderful.  I decided to try to fry the rest of the dough.

I filled a saucepan with some oil and dropped some dough in.  Some of them just soaked up oil, some browned.  Trying to save my project turned nightmare, I filled a Ziploc bag with cinnamon and sugar and tossed the fried pieces of dough inside, shaking them vigorously.

Eventually, it was over.  What did I have to show for all my effort, excitement, and frustration?  Baked scones, fried cinna-sugga strangeness, and an hour of scrubbing a countertop to rid my home of evidence of this travesty.  The scones were quite good, dense and light with a great flavor.  But a scone, no matter how nice, is not a donut and never will be.

A few weeks passed and something wonderful happened.  I received a text from Cynthia who found herself and her good friend Jane in Xi’an.  They had found a treasure of treasures: a Dunkin Donuts!  After traveling 712 km via plane, two glazed donuts sat in a Dunkin Donuts bag on my desk at work.

If you’ve seen the movie The Pursuit of Happiness you’ll know what kind of reaction happened—that kind of, let’s go outside and clap my hands and ooze joy for the world to see.  I didn’t know what to do with myself!  After unwrapping the first donut, my eyes widened.  The donut was gone before I had even sung it all the praises I had prepared.  Something’s never change.

Maybe I should be a cop.