Donuts with Chocolate Brandy Sauce

Okay so forget everything I said about fresh, colorful and healthy for just a moment.  This dessert bears none of these characteristics.  However, despite my rants over the plethora of fresh produce options and the pursuit of natural ingredients, I am entirely unashamed to admit that this is one of darn yummiest and most fun desserts ever.

I've had a hankering for fried dough and chocolate sauce ever since I saw it in Marth's magazine months (years?) ago.  The picture I clipped has pestered me with each flip through my recipe binder.  So when we put a date on the calendar for friends to come visit recently, I knew it was time to finally pull out the clipping and try it. 

Though my anticipation for this dessert was borderline irrational, I still hesitated at the thought/effort of prepping homemade dough.  Then I had a flashback of a Paula Deen episode where she employed what I considered at the time to be a completely ghetto idea. After momentary reflection of my laziness, however, my brain morphed it into a brilliant short cut.  She took a can of refrigerator biscuits (the preservative-filled, "butter flavor" kind that you pull apart and bake), cut a hole in the middle (with a soda bottle top, no less), dropped them in a fryer and called them donuts.  So this, friends, is what I did too.

I will pause and ask for your forgiveness for the promotion of this manufactured "food".  But now I'll move on and say that it was freakin awesome.

The chocolate sauce was absolute heaven, and here is the recipe.  I made this earlier in the day, threw it in the fridge, and then heated it gently to serve with the donuts.

For the donut frying part, we actually put a cast iron skillet on the grill.  This kept the mess and oil smell outside.  I just heated canola oil until it responded to a drop of water with a loud splatter.  So precise, huh?  I have no idea what the oil temperature was, and it actually didn't seem to matter.



We put the donuts on a paper towel lined plate to drain and then gave them a sugar shower. 



The donut "holes" went in the oil as well for a Molly-sized treat.

The only thing that could improve the donuts' warm, flaky goodness was a dunk in the rich chocolate sauce.  It's almost like the world stood still for a second with each bite.

These would make a really fun activity for kids too (after the blistering hot oil part, of course), if you put out a variety of glazes/sauces and sprinkles for the kids to decorate the donuts themselves!