Member Reviews

Klivans, Elinor. (2011). Donuts: Recipes for Glazed, Sprinkled, and Jelly-Filled Treats. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 9781740899826

Ferroni, Lara. (2018). Doughnuts: 90 Simple and Delicious Recipes to Make at Home. Seattle: Sasquatch Books. ISBN: 9781632171252

One sentence description: These books claim you can make doughnuts in your home kitchen.*

Why I chose these books: Doughnuts! (Donuts?) Duh! For someone who doesn’t eat many doughnuts, I think about them alot. And I have memories of my mom making them on a lazy weekend afternoon.

What I liked: So many different kinds and flavors of doughnuts. Also the Ferroni book is basically different “base” doughnuts (including baked and gluten free) that change flavors when you add different glazes, etc.

Pro tip: You can find Ferroni’s recipe for baked chocolate doughnuts on her website. Her recipe for yeasted glazed doughnuts is also online.

*You totally can. I just start thinking about heating up and then disposing of all the oil and then I don’t. I need to buy a doughnut pan and give the baked ones a try.

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Doughnuts! These recipes looks so delicious, and the instructions seem almost too easy to be true! With variations for vegan and gluten-free versions, there are options for everyone in this book. I can't wait to try a few recipes for my husband's birthday.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like doughnuts. Yeah we have our favorites, or maybe someone doesn’t like the lemon filling, (which I happen to love everything lemon), but as far as not liking any doughnut at all, I just haven’t met anyone. So, I’m not even sure if anyone will even care about a Doughnut book review. Because what else would you need to know? I helps you make doughnuts!
But just in case, here goes my Doughnut Book review:
The book contains 90 recipes in total. 90! you get gluten free recipes, vegan recipes, baked doughnuts, fried doughnuts. In other words, something for every taste.
I’m not vegan, nor allergic to gluten, but I still appreciate those recipes, because I have family that has celiac disease, and many many vegan friends, so this will come very handy if I don’t know what treat to make, I can just reference this fantastic doughnut book and find a nice recipe.
This book has so MUCH! From the very basics to the artisan level doughnuts. Ricotta doughnuts, chocolate doughnuts, apple cider and french curlers.
And when I say basics, I mean the very basics. The basics you need if you never ever made doughnuts before. The main ingredients, tools of the trade, and even a guide to use this book inside the book.
With this many recipes I will have to really get on the workouts so I don’t get overweight! I mean, just the photographs are enough to make your mouth water! So when you actually start making them, the anticipation… the process… the smells coming thru the oven… is just impossible not to make yourself a pot of coffee and sit down to enjoy your doughnut.
And everything is so easy to find to mix and match because is divided in 3 sections.

Doughnuts
Glazes and toppings
Flavors

And for all my entrepreneur friends, maybe you can even get started on a side hustle making artisan doughnuts to order!
There is more than enough recipes and flavors included, so having a nice menu won’t be a problem.
If I wasn’t moving all the time, I would definitely make some, invite some friends for a tasting party and simply offer them to make them to order.

Americans consume more than 10 billion doughnuts a year. Which means this is a great business opportunity. If not your main source of income, a side hustle for the weekends.

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OMG, doughnuts in every iteration! Doughnuts: 90 Simple and Delicious Recipes to Make at Home by Lara Ferroni features gorgeous photos and amazing recipes to boot. Even gluten-free and vegan versions in this expanded edition, plus 30 new recipes. What’s not to love? 5 of 5 Ecstatic Stars!

With gratitude to the author, Sasquatch Books and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are fully mine. Pub Date 25 Sep 2018. #Doughnuts #NetGalley

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Doughnuts are everyone's favourite...... If we make our own doughnut we can't explain the happiness in tasting it...... It was a great book for all those doughnut lovers........

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I love donuts. I've had three today. I live in a city famous for its wonderful and strange donuts. So, yeah, donuts. I love donuts. The Pacific Northwest is big on donuts. DONUTS! I've never actually considered making my own donuts, especially since I live in a place where I can get artisanal donuts whenever I feel like it. This book covers both all the donut-making basics, plus ways to make gluten-free and other fancy-pants-type donuts, like sourdough donuts, or ricotta donuts, cornuts, or the kind of fancy-schmancy donuts you'd get from Blue Star (the fanciest of my local donut places. Voodoo is for tourists. Coco is for regular people and they have the best coffee. Know your PDX donut options, people!). They even have a recipe for malasadas! And all the glazes you can possibly think of. Mmm, donuts. If you're a beginner hoping to make your own donuts from home, then you'll want to check this book out.

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Although I’ve enjoyed many a doughnut in my day, I have never made one from scratch. In fact, if I were thrown into a baking competition tomorrow, I’d be hard pressed as to how to make one. Are doughnuts deep fried or baked? Do they require a yeasted dough like bread or a batter like cake? Are they glazed warm or cold? And most importantly, how does all that filling get inside? But it wasn’t the need for answers to those burning questions that drove me to pick up this book, it was the beautiful cover photograph. If anything could teach me to make a doughnut (and convince me to properly spell the word), it would be something pretty.

After a short breezy introduction, the book launched into doughnut basics, which talked about ingredients, tools, and generally how to use the book. There were two gluten free baking mix recipes included in the ingredients discussion - one for cake doughnuts and one for yeast doughnuts.

The book itself was divided into three sections: doughs, glazes and toppings, flavors. After approximately fifty pages of dough recipes, the glazes and toppings section comprised about twenty pages of recipes. These two sections could be mixed and matched to create whatever doughnut suits your mood. But, as if that wasn’t enough, the last section contained about one hundred pages of different doughnut flavors, ranging from apple pie to chicken and doughnuts. These recipes not only used the basic recipes for doughs and glazes, but also added twists like fillings and toppings.

The cover photograph was a good indication of just how gorgeous the full color photography would be in this book. Pretty much every recipe included at least one photograph illustrating the recipe.

Even after reading this cookbook, I’m still a little frightened to try making raised doughnut dough and to deep fry them. But I think I can handle baked cake doughnuts, so I just ordered three doughnut pans (two for the house and one as a gift) as well as two copies of this book (one for the house and one as a gift). The gift is for a friend of mine who loves to experiment with gluten free baking. I’m super excited to see what types of results that each of us achieves!

I have yet to attempt any recipes from this book, but I will update my review when I do.

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Oh, my goodness this book! I cannot even begin to describe my love for this book. I got an ARC of this for my kindle to preview for the library, and I am going to rush out and buy a hardback copy for my bookshelf at home or to place on my coffee table. The cover is delicious, the pictures are simply gorgeous. You want to make every single doughnut on each page. I was reading it next to my sister and said, look at this one, look at this one, and basically did that until she asked me "kindly" to stop. They all look so yummy, and I cannot get enough. This book is a complete five shiny gold stars for me, and I will recommend it to everyone I know. This will be a book I gift as well.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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I received a copy of this book for a fair and honest review. I love cookbooks and baking and there are several I am going to try out. Especially the Chai doughnut recipe since I love Chai tea. There are several sections for the book that include Doughs, Glazes and Topping and Flavors. This book made me want doughnuts after reading that is a good cookbooks. It did exactly what it was designed for. All I can say is yummy.

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This is a great cookbook for literally all things doughnuts. There are so many recipes in this book, ones I couldn't even imagine before reading this. Most are easy enough to make for an intermediate cook. Definitely look forward to trying a bunch of these recipes!

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This cookbook looks good enough to eat!

The recipes in here are many and detailed. There are so many different flavors and they all look beautiful! There are pictures for the recipes and they look fantastic! We will definitely be trying these recipes out when we make homemade doughnuts again. They do look like they could be time consuming, so be aware that they aren't exactly quick to make, but I am betting they are worth the time and the work!

No nutritional facts and I didn't love the formatting. It is in paragraph bullet form, which can be hard to follow when making food and trying to refer back to it. Yet, I still think this is a solid doughnut cookbook and am currently planning a doughnut making night, inspired by this book! Yum!

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I would love to have a hard copy of this book. I thought the recipes were very easy and simple enough that I can make with my children. thank you for allowing me to review this book.

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This is a fabulous book for anyone who wants to make really over-the-top, perfect donuts. Full color, gorgeous illustrations accompany every recipe. There are even basic recipes for vegan and gluten free donuts, so you can make many of the recipes vegan or gluten free.

Pros and cons in a nutshell:

Pros:
~ There are photos of every recipe in the book.
~ There is a really diverse range of recipes (not just donuts but fried goodies like sopapillas, picarones, churros, crullers and more, along with all kinds of flavored donuts and all kinds of toppings).
~ There are basic recipes for gluten free raised and cake donuts, which you can then use to make most of the recipes in the book and can use with any of the toppings.
~ Vegan basic recipes are provided, so vegans can make many of the recipes in the book with these basic bases.
~ Recipes are provided for a huge range of toppings -- chocolate glaze, glaze, citrus, caramel, ginger, and on and on.
~ The author goes above and beyond, giving recipes for how to make your own colorful sprinkles and how to make homemade fillings and more.
~ A wide range of foods and flavors are used. I loved the fact that there's a recipe for huckleberry cheesecake donuts since huckleberries were in season when the author was developing that recipe. Using local, seasonal and wild ingredients is such a delightful way to cook (and happens to be the way I cook). She says you can use any other fruit like blueberries and raspberries, too, so this in no way limits your options.
~ The author teaches you how to cook donuts right. Following her recipes, you'll get really delicious, memorable treats.

Cons (for some):
~ The recipes tend to be rather complicated.
~ Ingredients and tools tend to be rather specialized instead of those that you may have in your cupboards (nothing crazy, though).
~ The gluten free donuts use a mix of GF flours and starches instead of just a generic GF flour blend, so you'll need to purchase some starches and flours you may not have on hand (this is not a con for me as I prefer to mix up my own blends, but I know more and more GF folks like to just buy one flour blend and use it for everything).
~ Most of the recipes are fried, which means lots of calories and a fair amount of time and effort.
~ There are basic recipes for gluten free *or* vegan donuts, but none for folks who are both vegan and GF. I know a huge number of vegans who are GF (and I'm in some online cooking groups for vegan and gluten free baking with literally tens of thousands of members), so that's a bigger demographic than you might think. I think you can probably tinker and combine recipes to make it work, but I haven't tried it.
~ The author does not even attempt to provide healthier or lower calorie donuts (which of course she had no responsibility to do). I know you can make healthier donuts as my standard baked donut recipe uses quite a lot of fruits or veggies (shredded zucchini or carrots, cooked pumpkin, mashed banana, etc.) and I use whole grain flours for it and it still tastes really wonderful. There aren't really alternative, lower calorie or higher nutrient recipes in this book. This is a donut book so of course this is to be expected. If you're trying to lose weight or improve your health, this may not be a great book to have on hand.
~ No recipes are provided for mini donut makers. We have one and I use it a lot, so I was hoping (but not expecting) that the author would give some recipes for those. I don't get the idea that she'd mess with such a silly thing though and I can't fault her for wanting to stick to doing it right. :)

The author also gives instructions to make homemade versions of the fillings and ingredients, which I think is a plus but may annoy some people. For instance, she gives instructions to make homemade fillings instead of saying you could make vanilla pudding and fill with that. I love that she does that, but cooks who want quick and easy instructions may be disappointed.

All in all, I adore this book and may purchase my own copy. I love the huge variety of recipes for things like glazes, toppings, and flavor variations, and I'm so happy that she included gluten free and vegan folks. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet and will update when I do.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

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This was a great and easy to follow book. I loved the recipes that a got a chance to make. Who doesn't love fresh donuts?

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I enjoy doughnuts but have never been brave enough to cook them myself. My cousin's own a popular donut shop so I have never felt the need to cook my own. What really impressed me with this book was the plethora of recipes from around the world. I've had malasadas in Hawaii. But I never knew about Ghanaian doughnuts, crullers, loukomades, picarones, etc. And the many different glazes just opened my eyes to the different flavor combinations. I've only gotten through cooking a few of the recipes. But so far, I have been successful.

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Doughnuts/donuts are wonderful, but even better when they are very fresh! My family was excited to learn how to make these, and now we are never going back to the stale= and chemical-tasting donuts from the store!

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Doughnuts! Doughnuts are one of my favorite desserts. I used to think that these delightful treats always had to be a terribly processed fried dough that you could only enjoy spontaneously spread out in the year. I got a chance to read through this amazing book filled with a variety of recipes for any type of donut you would want. I love the gluten free options and the baking options along with the tradional frying. This book will make you crave donuts just from gazing through all of the amazing pictures along side the recipes.

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I want to make them all!! A beautifully photographed, easy to follow cookbook for a variety of delicious doughnuts at home. What more could you ask for?

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

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This is a delightful book of doughnut recipes!! I was shocked and excited about the wide range of delectable doughnut recipes to choose from! There's even a recipe for fried chicken doughnuts! Beautifully photographed so you know what they should look like too. I don't have any complaints about the book. , other than some of the directions are a little short on what to do, even though for the most part this is a detailed book. But I really like the variety of recipes that are available!
; "I voluntarily reviewed this book for an honest review"

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Since I love to cook and bake, and have made doughnuts in the past, I thought I'd look and see if this book has anything new. Not only does it have what's listed above, but there are also recipes for doughnuts that are gluten-free (although I have to admit I haven't made those). But it's there for those who haven't been able to find recipes before.

To tell the truth, yes, it's easier to just go and purchase doughnuts from a store; but you're going to get ones that have tons of preservatives in them and there's no guarantee that you won't find ones that don't taste like what they are - out of a box. While many of these recipes take time and effort, the end result is you're going to get a very nice doughnut indeed with great taste. Recommended.

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