All I Want for Christmas: A writer’s recipe for happiness

Though the cake, fruit-and-spice rich, was the highlight of the spread, its preparation was out of my league. Too complex, too dizzyingly fancy. It intimidated me; I would peek in, filch a raisin from the bowl, and retreat.

Instead, what I loved was the making of the doughnuts, because there I could help. In fact, as Mummy (ever supportive) pointed out, the doughnuts couldn’t have been made without my help. She would mix the dough, the work of a few minutes as compared to the far more laborious and involved mixing of the cake batter, and once the dough was kneaded and rolled, it was time for me to cut it.

Equipped with a small steel glass and an old lipstick tube, well-washed till nobody even remembered that it had once held lipstick, I got down to work. The steel glass, fitting perfectly into my small hands, was used to cut circles from the dough. The lipstick tube was then used to punch out holes from the middle of each circle. You had to be very precise; the hole had to be exactly in the middle, and pressure had to be applied uniformly to make sure the doughnut didn’t get crimped or twisted or lop-sided in any way. It made me, then less than 10 years old, feel very important. As soon as Mummy had fried a few doughnuts, all golden-brown and plump, I’d clamour to taste one, at least. And then another, because it would be blasphemous, in my eyes, to stop at one. Invariably, Mummy would set aside a few doughnut holes and fry those for us, instead of kneading them back into the dough.

Recently, I discovered that in Nagaland, these doughnuts — often minus the spice, and made with ghee rather than butter — are much-loved at Christmas. A friend from Maharashtra also said that her family makes these (“cake doughnuts”, as she calls them, so apt a term) for Christmas.

So here is the recipe. They’re easy to make, and there’s something so comfortingly delicious about them, you don’t really need it to be Christmas to enjoy these.

This quantity makes about 36 doughnuts.

Ingredients

2 tbsp unsalted butter
¾ cup white sugar
¾ cup milk
2 eggs
3½ cups refined flour (maida)
1 level tsp salt
5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp powdered cinnamon
¼ tsp powdered or freshly grated nutmeg
Neutral flavoured vegetable oil, for deep frying
Extra refined flour, for dusting work surface and cutters

Recipe

* Whisk the eggs until light and fluffy. Set aside.
* In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until pale and light. Add the eggs and beat for a couple of minutes until well-mixed. * Add milk and mix.
* Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg.
* Add the sifted dry ingredients to the batter and mix to form a dough. Do not over-knead; you just want the ingredients mixed uniformly, no more.
* Break off lumps the size of an orange from the dough. On a clean work surface, lightly dusted with flour, roll out the dough to a thickness of about 1 cm.
* Use a glass or small bowl, its rim dusted with flour, to cut circles from the rolled-out dough. Use a smaller rimmed object (the cap of a liquor bottle works) to cut out the doughnut holes from each circle.
* Set the cut-out doughnuts aside on a lightly floured surface to rest for 15 minutes while you cut the rest of the doughnuts.
* Once the doughnuts have rested, heat the oil (about 4-5 cm deep) in a kadahi or wok. Over a medium flame, fry the doughnuts until golden brown, flipping them over once in between.
* Drain on kitchen paper. Once cooled, the doughnuts should be kept in an airtight jar.

Madhulika Liddle is an author based in the NCR. Apart from historical fiction and short stories, she also writes on food, cinema and travel

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