DK Donuts (Review)

So..................................................................................................................who doesn't like donuts?

DK Donuts & Little Bean Espresso (1300 W State St, Boise, ID 83702 (208) 385-7480) has a special place in my heart.  For about a year I lived just across the street, in a dilapidated house that contained no less than four raging alcoholics at a time.  My place was in the basement, where I avoided much of the drama in exchange for mildew.  I didn't have much money at the time, and most of my food came in the form of Ramen noodles or canned food graciously given by churches.  Still, everyone needs an occasional treat, and mine was DK.  Every other weekend, said basement would be filled with a collection of my nerd friends, where we would stay up late into the night playing Dungeons and Dragons.  After the party had slain the heroes (because of course, everyone wanted to play as the bad guys,) we would venture over to DK, where plenty of fresh donuts could be found in spite of the late hour.

An Accidental Discovery: Tangerine Dream Rolls

I had never imagined, when first I set out to write about food, that I would ever say the words "it all started with a box of prepackaged Pillsbury mix," but here we are.



Who knew?

To be honest, I don't even know where the stuff came from.  I was cleaning out the cramped cupboard that houses my "baking only" ingredients and found this guy crammed in the back with some boxed cake mixes, from some long ago time when I must have not really given a damn.  The first impulse was to chuck it.  I've been enjoying baking more and more, and cooking alongside Poppin' Fresh seemed like a setback. However, I'm cheap and it's wasteful.  I knew from the start that I didn't want to make the hot rolls that were the main focus of the product.  The "great pizza crust" touted in the lower left corner was tempting, but once again I'd already locked in my menu for the week, and I wanted the dough boy gone.  (I needed room for cake flour, so that I could eventually make these.)  As anyone who even periodically reads this blogs knows, one area where I do have room to tamper is with dessert.  The two years I spent working at a cinnamon roll factory  had ruined me off of the sticky treats for most of my adult life, but with one caveat.  Orange rolls.  Perhaps it was because they only made them sporadically, perhaps they were just better, but while the cinnamon rolls I bagged each day grew to disgust me, orange rolls were a highlight of my day whenever the test pan ended up in the break room. 

Other People's Recipes: New Mexico Chocolate Cookie Crinkles

One of the nicest things about the fall and winter months is all the attention paid to tradition; while my family has rituals for the Fourth of July and the whole month of August is pretty much a party (with both mine and Wife's birthdays bracketing our anniversary over a three week period,) none of these things really stands up to the feelings generated between Halloween and the first week of the new year. Some of these traditions, like the yearly Zombie Walk I posted a picture of on Halloween, involve an activity, but whether it is roasting pumpkin seeds as a family or the deliciously unhealthy "sausage biscuits" Wife makes every Christmas morning, many of them revolve around the kitchen. 

That's why when my friend Mouse talked about the cookies her mom used to make for her, I knew I should try and make them myself.  I had been looking for something tasty to make for a friend who was in town, but even when that didn't pan out it I decided I would like to try and replicate the cookies Mouse had grown up on for her sake.  I had already tried to replicate her nostalgia once, on her birthday, with mixed results.  The candied apples I made in lieu of a cake looked beautiful, tasted wonderful, and played hell on your teeth.  My inexperience with candy thermometers made what could have been a perfect treat more reminiscent of the glass Christmas ornaments my punk friends used to eat to freak people out.  I wasn't going to let one mistake in the kitchen discourage me, however, so I set out to find a recipe.