On Saturdays when I am making my weekly menus and grocery list, sometimes Joey will pull down a cookbook and sit at the table with me.

“OH!  Can we make this?” He’ll ask, and point out a recipe.

The  most recent request was for homemade chocolate doughnuts.  “Maybe we can make them on New Year’s Day,” He suggested.

If you’d have come to our apartment this morning, you’d have found Joey whisking the eggs, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl while I sifted the dry ingredients together.

We had to rest the dough in the refrigerator for at least an hour, so we ran some errands and did some other things for awhile.  When the dough was finally ready, so were we.

We pressed it out into a circle 1/2 inch thick, and used a biscuit cutter to get our doughnut shape.  Then we used our heart-shaped cookie cutter to make the doughnut holes.

Aren’t they CUTE?!  Joey was in charge of the doughnut-hole-removal process, and I gotta say…it was not easy.  those little things got seriously stuck in the cookie cutter.

We heated the oil in the pot to 365* exactly, and when it was ready…

…we dropped in the doughnuts, one at a time.

The oil bubbled and fizzled merrily and the kitchen began to smell like chocolate.  Every 30 seconds I flipped our little chocolatey doughnuts to ensure that they didn’t burn or overcook on one side.

We pulled them out of the oil after 2 1/2 minutes and let them drain a bit before placing them on a cookie sheet to finish drying off.

There they sat, looking all chocolatey and beautiful.

“Joey, don’t they look great?” I gushed.

“They do look great,” he agreed.

Once we had finished frying all the doughnuts, it was time for the cute little heart-shaped doughnut holes.

In they plopped, and the oil fizzed around them quickly, dunking them up and down with its bubbles.  By this point the oil had gotten to almost 400*, something I was concerned about because I didn’t want the doughnuts to burn.  (I think next time I’ll put the burners on  Medium instead of Medium-High like the recipe said.)

We had opted not to glaze the doughnuts with chocolate, which the recipe called for, because we thought that would be too much chocolate.  Instead, we dusted them with powdered sugar.

(I love this picture because it’s raining powdered sugar!)

Soon they were cool enough to touch and powdery enough to make an enormous mess when touched.  They were ready to eat.

Joey poured himself a big glass of milk.  (I hate milk so I tried not to look at it.  That stuff makes me creep out just to look at it.)

The doughnuts were amazing.  Crispy delicate on the outside and dense and buttery on the inside.  (And they don’t even have any butter in them!)

There was one major problem.

They were kind of dryish.

Somehow, even though they melted in our mouths, they felt dry as we chewed them.  That meant we needed to do one more thing in order to perfect our first doughnut making experience.

“They need some vanilla glaze,” Joey said, as we finished up the last bites of our handiwork.  “Not the chocolate stuff, but definitely some vanilla glaze.”

“I’m on it,” I said.

Joey went over to read some homework and within five minutes I had whipped up a vanilla glaze and was dunkin’ the donuts (hehe) in it.

“What are you doing now,” Joey asked after awhile.

“Just finishing the glazing,” I said, pulling out the last doughnut hole and placing it on the wire rack to dry.

“ALREADY?!” Joey said, and shot off the couch and over to the kitchen.  “That was some fast glaze-making.”

He leaned over the bar and observed our now-glazed doughnuts.

“Woah.  Those look…really good.” He said.

“I know.  I want to eat another one,” I replied.

We each ate one doughnut hole.

I think we’ve started a family tradition.  I’m not sure what kind of doughnuts we’ll make on New Year’s Day next year, but maybe I can get him to try sour cream ones…the kind like they have at Krispy Kreme…