Donuts

Another one that shocked me in how good they turned out. If it weren't for the fact that it is an enormous pain to put together a frying rig (and fryers are a pain to maintain and clean) I would do these waaaay more often.

Based off of another Good Eats recipe (found here) along with a different recipe for the glaze (found here) - the only wrinkle I added was to make some of my donuts into sticks, and to turn some of those sticks into peanut sticks (per a request).

Meat Sauce

Some forewarning - this is going to take most of a day. The great news is, you can get a good 5 meals out of it, and its pretty hard to actually mess it up. To start, this is all based off of a Good Eats recipe (found here). The only major change is that broth was used instead of wine.

The net result is a very rich, hearty sauce - good enough to eat by itself (when you run out of pasta on your plate), which is unusual (for me, at least). The only drawbacks are the whole 'takes a day' deal (oh, and the giant mess).

Soft Pretzels

This turned out to be one of the best things I've made, the only drawback is it creates a bit of a mess. Still, soooo worth it.

Working off of a Good Eats recipe, found here. Straight-forward dough - water, sugar, flour, butter, yeast, salt (the portions of which are in the link - remember to always weigh your flour, it can vary a ton based on how densely packed it is). It turns out mixing dough is a lot easier to do with a stand-mixer and a dough hook then it is by hand (trust me, I've done a few). Just let that sucker spin for a while, stop it a few times to force everything off of the hook and give it a few kneads by hand (I find that if you just let it mix, the stuff near the top of the hook winds up being a bit drier/stiffer then the rest unless you mix it up a bit).