Donut Day

Mary Lou's Donuts in Lafayette, Indiana, is evidently quite a favorite here. We didn't quite get there yesterday for National Donut Day -- but every day can be Donut Day if you are so inclined. Donuts aren't something that any of us eat very often, but we all have some kind of favorite. Mine is the yeast-raised donuts dipped in cinnamon-sugar. What fun!

Mary Lou's -- around 10 minutes from Elaine and Larry's house.

Our dozen donuts included four of my first-choice sugar donuts, which Mary Lou makes in a twisted shape rather than the more usual torus. We also chose cake donuts, raspberry and lemon-filled donuts, and a couple of iced donuts. I ate half a sugar donut on the way home, and the other half plus half a lemon-filled donut for lunch -- that is, I managed a donut and a half total. We still have several donuts left with which to celebrate our private donut day.

Wikipedia describes quite a lot of donut history, chemistry, ingredients, and the origin of Donut Day, which is the first Friday in June. The lengthy article includes early references to donuts in fiction and cookbooks, a list of countries with donut-like pastries, and more. A bit of the basics on donuts:

"Doughnuts have a disputed history. One theory suggests they were invented in North America by Dutch settlers, and in the 19th century, doughnuts were sometimes referred to as one kind of oliekoek (a Dutch word literally meaning 'oil cake'), a 'sweetened cake fried in fat.'

"Hanson Gregory, an American, claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 aboard a lime-trading ship when he was 16 years old. Gregory was dissatisfied with the greasiness of doughnuts twisted into various shapes and with the raw center of regular doughnuts. He claimed to have punched a hole in the center of dough with the ship's tin pepper box, and to have later taught the technique to his mother. Smithsonian Magazine states that his mother, Elizabeth Gregory, 'made a wicked deep-fried dough that cleverly used her son's spice cargo of nutmeg and cinnamon, along with lemon rind,' and 'put hazelnuts or walnuts in the center, where the dough might not cook through.' and called the food 'doughnuts.'

"According to anthropologist Paul R. Mullins, the first cookbook mentioning doughnuts was an 1803 English volume which included doughnuts in an appendix of American recipes. By the mid-19th century, the doughnut looked and tasted like today's doughnut, and was viewed as a thoroughly American food." (from Wikipedia, "Donuts," dowloaded June 3, 2017)