I made some grand bold statements before Christmas on making sourdough doughnuts. I really was. I was going to do it. Really and truly, cross my heart and all that.

Then I looked at a few recipes and my figurative doughnut balloon? Well it slowly deflated.

I don’t know. All that deep frying, sugar, needing of an extra special cutter or doughnut maker thingy stuff. All that extra, well everything. It just took the wind out of my doughy-nut sails. I didn’t want to buy another contraption and I didn’t want to fry them all in lots of oil. Actually when I thought about it, I didn’t really want to cover them in oodles of sugar either.

Well why on earth would I be thinking about making doughnuts then, I hear you ask?

Rather good question really. You see, it started here…I blame them entirely for turning my world upside down with the deliciousness of their baked goods. It was because of them that I had lofty dreams of making sourdough doughnuts in the first place. Having the heady smell of cinnamon and sugar wafting around my kitchen. The decadent bite down into that amazingly heady mix of sugar and fat. Yes it sounded good, and my kids well they were more than keen, (they also had tasted those doughnuts you see.)

I paused. Had a little think and a then a little reassess. Maybe I would try a slightly healthier version? Could it be done? Would it pass the family taste test?

I decided to give it a crack. The first ones were completely edible, the kids inhaled them so there was no loss there. BUT, they really and truly weren’t doughnuts. They were rolls. Plain and simple. So what did I need to do to take them up to doughnut status?

I could try to make a little hole in them perhaps? And maybe up the sugar a smidge?

Second go. Doughnuts, they shouted! As I quietly plonked them on the table in front of them.

Now to the die hard doughnut fans of this world, there will probably be a brief muttering of no, that ain’t no doughnut lady. (I’ll spare you on all the corners I cut.)

Third go. Actually third go, didn’t even warrant a picture. Edible sure, but over proved and really bordering on a little burnt around the edges. (Actually maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a baker of doughnuts after all?)

Fourth go? It nearly didn’t happen, I was a bit over them, but there seemed to be this incessant whisper, one morrrre goooo….and so I did and they were the best ones yet. Were they technically sourdough doughnuts? Well, I’m not sure about that. What I do know is that I’ve locked myself into developing this recipe a little further and in the mean time? I hear they make excellent ones in Byron Bay and Hobart, lucky for me, two of my favourite places to go and visit!

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How about you? Have you tried making sourdough doughnuts?