Happiness is Doughnut Day

Doughnut Day happened about once a month at my place when I was a kid. Dad made the doughnuts when he was in a good mood. There was a lot of work in Dad’s doughnuts. He didn’t have a doughnut machine or even a fancy cutter to cut the outer and inner rings in one smooth manoeuvre. But he was very innovative and used a bottle top and an upturned glass jar to do the job. Later, as Mum developed a love of cocktails, a shot glass became the ideal tool for the doughnut hole.

It’s gotta be exactly half an inch thick

After making the dough, Dad loved slapping it around on the chopping board for a bit. Then he’d roll it out with a long neck beer bottle to exactly half an inch thickness. He had an old wooden ruler that he’d hold vertical against the dough to get the exact measurement to ensure a nice cakey texture. Any thicker they’d be raw in the middle, any thinner they’d be too tough to eat. When the cutting started my brothers and I used to hang around Dad like five hungry birds waiting for a doughnut hole. If the holes got stuck in the bottle top, he’d lose it and we knew it was time to get out of the kitchen. This situation didn’t occur so much after he discovered the shot glass wasn’t just excellent for measuring alcohol.

Perfect Doughnut Shapes

While Dad was cutting the dough into perfect doughnut shapes the fat was heating in the old frying pan. No fancy oils for cooking back in those days. You used your animal fat, drained it after cooking and re-used it. As soon as the blue smoke started rising from the sizzling fat, the rings of dough were carefully placed into the pan. We had an electric frying pan which would have been very progressive back in the old farming community of Forcett. This was prior to civilisation as we know it today.  After the doughnuts sizzled away in the fat for a few minutes and became puffy and dark golden, they were carefully lifted out for the final touch. A good smothering of pre-prepared castor sugar mixed with cinnamon. And they were delicious! It’s gotta be said at this point that my dad was a good cook.

Doughnut Day in Victoria

Now Doughnut Day has become famous. Not the Doughnut Day of my childhood but a different kind of Doughnut Day.  Since recording its first day of zero new cases of COVID-19 for almost five months, Victoria celebrated with doughnuts. However, just like toilet paper at the start of the pandemic, suppliers are struggling to keep up with the demand. People can’t get enough of them. Doughnuts that is. Boxes of them are flying out the doors of bakeries all over Melbourne. Queues of people as long as the unemployment queues outside Centrelink during the first lockdown have been eagerly waiting outside bakeries. Doughnuts of all shapes and sizes; with or without holes; cream or jam-filled; crushed nuts or sprinkles on top. Some bakers have become very innovative and are colour coding them; pink for no new cases and yellow for no new deaths.

Celebrate with a doughnut or two

Down on the family farm at Forcett, Doughnut Day was celebrated about once a month. But in Victoria we are celebrating Doughnut Day every day that we get zero new cases of COVID-19. At the time of writing, Victoria has celebrated seven consecutive Doughnut Days. If this continues Victorians will have to observe their own rolling average of doughnuts. But zero cases of COVID-19 for seven straight days is worth celebrating especially given that Victoria has been the hardest hit state in Australia with the case numbers. Word has it, that we are just emerging from the strictest, longest lockdown in the world. So let’s get with it and celebrate with a doughnut or two!

Doughnut Day happened about once a month at my place when I was a kid. Dad made the doughnuts when he was in a good mood. There was a lot of work in Dad’s doughnuts. He didn’t have a doughnut machine or even a fancy cutter to cut the outer and inner rings in one smooth manoeuvre. But he was very innovative and used a bottle top and an upturned glass jar to do the job. Later, as Mum developed a love of cocktails, a shot glass became the ideal tool for the doughnut hole.

Image: http://www.hdwallpaperspulse.com/donut-images.html