To celebrate the 4th of July, I got in touch with my Inner Fat American and made some deep-fried doughnuts. The step-by-step doughnut recipe I followed can be found on the Pioneer Woman's blog. The Chocolate Glaze recipe is from Alton Brown.

A field note: One thing I would recommend, when you are putting your dough in the fridge for the night, wrap the dough up directly in the plastic wrap, rather than in a bowl covered in plastic wrap. In the morning, your dough will have expanded happily into the shape of a sack of flour. Reminds me of my croissants. But today is not about the French. This is America Day.

I used my handy, dandy Ateco round cutters and even used one of my Ateco daisy cutters for some for some of the doughnut holes.

The daisy circles were cute, but I was feeling the classic round shape a bit more today. Something about the clean lines.

I re-rolled the scraps to make some mini-doughnuts. Cole even got to make some Freak Doughnuts (not pictured here).

I love Sunday mornings. As I was cutting up my circles, Vale knocked on the window to say hi and dropped off Lucy and the dog for a few minutes so she could take a shower. Here's sleepy Baby Cole hiding behind Miss Lucy in her PJs:

The dough is supposed to rise in a warm, draft-free place covered with a tea towel. I didn't want a tea towel to weigh my doughnuts down at all so I used a cheese cloth. I let them sit on the window sill where the doughnuts got to rise in the warmth of the sun. Note, however, that this is Summer in San Francisco so it was probably no more than 67 degrees. The window sill was not hot by any means.

Deep frying is fun. Why haven't I done this before? To everything before I eat it?

Here are some stark naked doughnuts. Amazingly not greasy feeling at all. Thanks to a full roll of paper towels, perhaps?

But who could stand to eat them plain? Oh, the humanity. I exercised my right to glaze the golden dough in a thin layer of sticky, sweet confectionary goodness. Tool used below is from the Ateco dipping tool set. It clearly has more uses than fondue in my kitchen.

You think I stopped there? Oh, no. This is not Communist Russia; we don't just get one type of potato. This a democracy, my friends. I made powdered sugar doughnuts and cinnamon sugar doughnuts. Oh, plus the Sprinkles. God Bless the Sprinkles. Doughnut holes, too. No dough left behind.