Yesterday was Eric’s 24th birthday. We have entered the 3-week period where our ages are 2 years apart. He’s an old man at 24, while I’m still youthful at 22. Like I said, this won’t last long, but it makes me feel good about myself.
If you know anything about us from reading this little blog, you know that we like to eat. And we especially like to eat on birthdays. As my good friend Becca always says, “Calories don’t count on birthdays.” And that’s good. Because we ate a lot. And it was wonderful.
I made Eric create a list of his favorite breakfast foods, dinners (homemade and at restaurants), and desserts. My plan was to make this whole week full of his favorite foods, but he didn’t get around to making his list until Tuesday, and I didn’t go grocery shopping until Wednesday. So we scratched that plan and made Thursday extra awesome instead.
One of Eric’s favorite breakfast foods is blueberry cake donuts (this may or may not be my influence). We are both particularly fond of Spalding’s blueberry cake donuts here in Lexington. My stomach is growling at the thought of them. I considered picking up a few of those on Thursday morning, but I couldn’t remember if they sold our favorite flavor on Thursdays (they are super tricky and sometimes withhold blueberry cake donuts from my sad, sad face). So I got ambitious and decided to make my own donuts. I’ve successfully made some pumpkin donuts in my donut maker before, but I wanted the real deal: fried donuts. I know that frying donuts goes against everything healthy that I believe in, but like I said before, calories don’t count on birthdays.
So I fried some donuts. Well, I fried some donut holes. I made the dough the night before (a real time saver), and when I went to roll out the donuts, the batter was about the consistency of pancake batter. No good. I attempted to cut some rounds out of the dough, but it just wasn’t participating. So I opted for donut holes, hoping I wouldn’t have to just scrap the whole thing and serve Eric yogurt for his birthday breakfast. Luckily, the donut holes were awesome. Not Spalding’s-level amazing, but still very good. If you try these yourself, fry them until they are really brown on the outside. I didn’t fry the first few batches for long enough, so the dough inside was still runny. If this happens to you, you can stick the fried donuts in the oven at 350 degrees for 5-10 minutes to firm up the insides. I’ll also warn you that the blueberries really wanted to force their way out of the dough when I fried them, which made for some pretty weird looking donut holes. But once you cover them in cinnamon and sugar, you won’t care what they look like. Yum.
Blueberry Cake Donut Holes
adapted from Allrecipes.com
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup skim milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup blueberries
canola oil for frying
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup sugar
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, egg, butter, and vanilla. Mix until well blended. Fold in the blueberries. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Heat oil in a deep skillet to 370 degrees F. Put flour on your hands and roll the chilled dough into small rounds.
Fry donut holes in hot oil until golden brown, turning once. Remove from oil to drain on a drying rack. Combine the remaining 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 cup sugar in a resealable bag. Place a few warm donuts into the bag at a time, seal and shake to coat.
After our 10,000 calorie breakfast, we waited a few hours to eat an enormous and wonderful lunch at Bourbon n’ Toulouse, our favorite Cajun place. I had the day off, so I picked Eric up from work to enjoy some delicious etouffee. With extra bread. Always get extra bread. Oh, it’s so good.
For dinner we opted for P.F. Chang’s. I blame our love for this place on Allen and Julie Tate, who took us there during our premarital counseling. We ordered lettuce wraps to start and then split an entree of chicken with broccoli, red peppers, and onion. So good. So stinkin’ good.
We ended the night with Eric’s requested dessert at home: a skillet chocolate chip cookie, topped with ice cream. (Remember, calories don’t count.) We had a skillet cookie a couple of years ago at a restaurant and immediately purchased our own little cast iron skillet specifically for cookie making purposes (if that’s not a rational decision, I don’t know what is). So we enjoyed a deliciously warm chocolate chip cookie topped with cappuccino chip frozen yogurt. It was as incredibly delicious as it sounds. And we were incredibly responsible and didn’t eat the entire thing last night (we learned our lesson from last time…).
And the best part of Eric’s birthday celebration? A UK win in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Woo!
We’ll jump back into healthier eating today (well, as healthy as we can be with leftover donut holes and skillet cookie). I’m making quinoa stuffed poblano peppers for dinner! Here’s hoping you eat something delicious and celebrate something fun today!
-Ally
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