An Uneventful Thanksgiving and My First Attempt at Homemade Donuts

I am finally getting around to writing this post. Last week was Thanksgiving. Since we don't have any family in town it was our first Thanksgiving with only my hubby, sister, and I. Our original plan was to hit a local buffet since Las Vegas has no shortage of those haha! On Wednesday night before Thanksgiving my hubby got a bright idea to make Thanksgiving dinner. Off we head to the grocery store to fight the crowds and buy a turkey, ham, and all the sides. We then rushed home to defrost the bird and get everything ready.

While all of this was going on I should mention that Coley and I had decided to attempt donuts (since we didn't think we were cooking dinner). We decided to try this recipe for the donuts and this one for our glaze.

WEDNESDAY:
We gathered all of our ingredients.

Then started on mixing the dough.

Finally our dough came together.

Now we just had to let it sit.. We aren't the most patient bakers and are often skipping this important part. (And we always wonder why we get bad results lol.)

We let it sit over night in the fridge (covered with plastic wrap). Insert Thanksgiving madness here... Hubby and I fight the grocery store lines, rush defrosting turkey, cleaning out bird :(, etc...

THURSDAY:

I woke up Thanksgiving morning got the turkey and ham ready to go and then Coley and I began the rest of our donut making. 

We rolled and cut donuts. Then had to wait once again for them to rise..

An hour and a half later they were ready to fry. :)

We had originally planned on using a basic donut glaze and decorating them to match these adorable plates I found in the the $1 Section at Target. 

But, the donut glaze did not taste as good as we thought it would. So back to the drawing board we went...

We then decided to use a chocolate ganache with some leftover Ghirardelli chocolate we had from a previous project.

Chocolate Ganache:

2oz. Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate chips

2oz. Ghirardelli Bittersweet Chocolate bar

1/2 cup of Heavy Cream.

Heat the cream in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Remove before it starts boiling, and pour over chocolate setting in a bowl, let sit for a couple minutes, and then stir until chocolate is fully melted, and the ingredients are combined.

I was pretty pleased with the results (and so were my co-workers when we took the leftover donuts to work the next day). However there were a few minor things I would change next time.. I would like to find a recipe or alter the one I used to make the donut dough a little sweeter. I would also use only milk chocolate to make the ganache as the bittersweet chocolate was a little to rich for donuts. 

We finally got the donuts finished about an hour before we were to eat our Thanksgiving dinner. I don't think I've ever made mashed potatoes and sides as fast as I did this year lol.

Maybe next year we will stick to pumpkin pie. ;)