Making Doughnuts

Today we were busy baking and making. With Arnie the Doughnut by Laurie Keller as our inspiration we filled our tummies with yummy doughnuts.

We used 101 Cookbook’s recipe for baked doughnuts. They were (yes we ate the whole 1 1/2 dozen YIKES) delicious. I would like to believe they were healthy since they were baked—but they were dipped in butter and rolled in cinnamon sugar. We were able to make the entire recipe in the food processor. This makes quick time of the kneading (we counted to 45 slowly and it was done).

And so you don’t think we are only about weapons around here, we made felt doughnuts too. My eleven year old was amazing with his needle and his sister was thrilled to have some new play food.

First we cut out our felt circles. You may use our template if you like.

doughnut-template

Sew the frosting to one of the doughnut pieces.

My son then sewed “sprinkles” all over the “frosting” with embroidery thread.

With right sides together sew doughnut pieces together, leaving an opening for turning

Turn doughnut right side out.

Stitch completely around the center of the doughnut. We found this easiest to do on the sewing machine. Stay as close to the edge as possible, catching the top and bottom layers.

Stuff doughnut and slip stitch dounut closed!

Ta Da!

We hope you will consider reading along with us to Reed to Feed! This funny and superfluous story gave me pause. As we are reading and eating I am reminded of how lucky we are to have an abundance of food. We can “play” with our food. This it not the case for so many. As a world population over 800 million people will go hungry today.

Advertisement

Marbleizing Paper

To make this fun and easy marbleized paper you will need: 1/2 tsp alum (helps paint adhere to the paper), 2 cups liquid starch, liquid acrylic paints, a long wooden skewer , a 9 X 13 pan and white copy paper cut to fit the inside your pan. You can change up the size of the pan, just keep the proportions of starch and alum the same. The starch should be 1 to 2 inches deep in your pan.

Pour 2 cups of liquid starch in the pan then add 1/2 tsp alum stirring until mixed.

Gently drop acrylic paint on the surface of the starch. Some paint will sink to the bottom- do not worry. Try not to use too much paint. For best results choose light and dark colors that go together. It will take some experimenting to know how much paint works best for you. Brands of acrylic paint differ in consistency. If after several tries you have trouble with the paint not staying on the surface, try adding a drop of water to your paint.

Take the wooden skewer and drag the paint through the starch. Continue dragging the skewer through the paint until you get a design you like. You might try other tools like a fork, feather or comb besides the skewer. Really the fun of this activity is watching the paint swirl around making different designs. There is no right and wrong. Enjoy the experimenting. We were mesmerized —- we hope you will be also!

Lay your piece of paper on top of the starch. Allow it to sit for a couple of seconds.

Lift the paper out of the pan and allow the starch to drip off the paper

Rinse the paper under running water removing any extra starch. This does not change the intensity of the colors (the below photo is a different piece of paper paper from the above photo)

After the paper has been rinsed, lay it out to dry. It will take about two hours for the paper to dry. When the paper is completely dry, iron on medium setting until the sheets of paper are flat.

You may find that you can print two sheets of paper before adding more paint to the starch. In the photo below, the bottom piece of paper was made first. We then used our skewer again making a different design and put on another sheet of paper.

In the photo below we had too much paint on our starch so we went ahead and made a print then changed up the design and then made another. If you feel that you have made a lot of prints and your starch is too full of paint, just pour it out and start again.

The possibilities of what to do with your paper are endless—- cover pencils, a book or a box, make note-cards, book marks or a picture frame etc.

Have fun!