Oregon. Land of the almighty fungus. And doughnut.

Fungi and marionberries? I'm not sure we can get our hands on those.

Oregon. The mushroom state. In Oregon, mushroom hunting is a fun activity for locals and the state even holds the annual Estacada Festival of the Fungus. Festivities include mushroom hunts, mushroom tasting, mushroom themed artwork, and even mushroom identification classes and competitions. Man, Oregonians really like their mushrooms!

The almighty fungus, something using hazelnuts, or marionberry pie were all foods we considered. If I were to go to Oregon, my first stop would be Voo Doo Doughnuts so maple bacon bars (donuts) was the food that was chosen instead for two reasons. 1. They were the most popular vote in my family (per usual) and, more importantly 2. It would be the easiest to get our hands on the ingredients (am I the only one getting deja vu here?).

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Do-re-mi excited for doughnuts.

To start off (dough), we “softened” some yeast. This is done before adding into the dough to “wake up” the packaged, frozen yeast. We then combined scalded milk (had to look that one up), sugar, butter, and salt with the softened yeast. After letting it cool, we add a cup of flour. Mix. Added an egg. Mixed. Added some more flour. Mix.

After all the mixing, we kneaded the dough and let it rise until it had doubled in size. This took about an hour. We punched the dough down and let it rise for another half an hour.

Once the half an hour of rising was done, we cut the dough into two spheres. We rolled out the dough and cut it into 12 different pieces. We put the now twelve pieces of dough onto a sheet of parchment paper, covered with a towel, and let rise for another 30 minutes(so much rising!).

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Time to fry!

We started by putting oil from vegetables into our dutch oven, putting the dutch oven on an oven burner, and letting the oil’s temperature rise to 375. Once the oil had reached the temperature desired, we fried the bars two at a time. The bars took surprisingly fast to fry. After the bars were done taking a steaming hot-oil bath, we put them on paper towels to let them dry, and then on a cooling rack to, you guessed it, cool.

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Homemade mapley deliciousness.

Time for glaze, the most important part of a doughnut since a doughnut without glaze is a bagel. I didn’t sign up to eat a bagel.

Since every spring we boil our own sap down into homemade maple syrup, of course we replaced the maple flavoring with that to create our glaze. When the bars had cooled, we put the glaze on the bars and put strips of cooked bacon onto the bars.

Consumption was quite enjoyable. The king has not yet been dethroned (deep-dish pizza), though the meal we have planned for Hawaii just might. Anywho, it was amazing (again). This is the first time I've had a doughnut for dinner. Thanks, Mom!