There's something about the smell of fried sugar.

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Growing up in Canada it's pretty much a given that you've eaten your far share of doughnuts and timbits from Tim Hortons. You've probably been through that inevitable showdown of elementary school children who fight over who gets the chocolate timbits whenever someone brought a snack pack to school. You know the flavors, the glazes, the fillings, the sprinkles, and the seasonal flavours off by heart and you know which kinds you like best and those you won't let within licking room of your large double double.

As it is, my family is more of the yeast doughnuts kind of people (if your my father, the more sprinkles you have that you can drop throughout your car the better). So for this months challenge I made yeast doughnuts and topped them with glaze and sprinkles or rolled them in cinnamon sugar.

Making doughnuts is a fairly easy process. The dough was nice to work with (although I did halve the recipe and like others suggested, I did end up adding about 1 cup more of flour to get the right consistency). I fried them in vegetable oil and let them cool slightly before adding some sugary sweetness. That being said, the doughnuts themselves are not really sweet so if you are going to make them, be sure to add some finishing touches via glazes or sugar.

My mother, led by the siren song of fried yeasty sugar goodness, came and watched me while I fried them them promptly suggested that she should try one while they were still warm. So she ate a doughnut with cinnamon sugar and said "oh my god" then continued by eating a couple more timbits and I'm pretty sure another doughnut. And just to let you know, while my mother does enjoy her sweet treats, she does not typically mow down in such a way. She then took a bunch over to our neighbour who called back a couple minutes later to say they were amazing and that she couldn't stop eating them. (She and her husband finished them off later that day.)  Needless to say, the doughnuts were a success. They're best eaten when just fried and went south fairly quickly after a day or two, but they were well worth it.

Since Halloween was just around the corner and my family was in need of cookies since SOMEONE ACTUALLY BOUGHT OREOS (WTH, seriously) I wanted to make something a little festive, but I didn't have time to go all out as I got a new job which I'm training to be the manager of a new cupcake store.  I had seen these cookies in one of my bakebooks and thought they were cute.  Behold Candy Corn Cookies!

Cute non?  They're just sugar cookies that you divide the batter in half, dye one half yellow.  Then divide the other half in an uneven half and dye the larger half of that orange, leaving the last bit plain.  Roll them into long strips, stack them and press them into a pyramid shape before wrapping them and putting them in the fridge to firm up for a couple hours.  From there it's just a case of slicing and baking then you're on your way to candy heaven.

A windfall of sugar cookies.

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

Rarely do I use cookie cutters and even more rare do I use ones I see in stores and dream beautiful baked dreams, but never use. This time I put to use small pie pastry cutters and some forest animal cookie cutters I picked up from IKEA (which were meant for cottage fun, but never made it there).

The cookie recipe worked out great. The dough was extremely easy to work with. I ended up freezing half of it and used it a couple of weeks later for thumb print cookies which were quite tasty.

I always like the looks of an iced sugar cookie and was quite inspired by the posts of others. What I forgot was that I hated doing it, but was quickly reminded at 11pm as I stood at my kitchen counter with my head proped up by one hand, icing bag in the other, diligently piping . Maybe it's because it was so late and I was tired, maybe because I forgot what a process it all was. Either way, although my family loved them and my mother shared them proudly with friends over a cuppa, they made me hate life briefly.  They were quite cute...