Donut Memories

Undoubtedly you’ve had this experience: the plate of food in front of you becomes a portal through time and space, and one bite can send you hurtling back to a moment in your past.

That has happened to me many times, but most recently the trigger was a dessert at NoJa in Mobile, Alabama (more about that later), called the Ginger Donut which featured two deep-fried, sugar-and-ginger encrusted donuts stacked on each other, topped with a quenelle of a chicory-flavored semi-freddo and drizzled with a burnt-sugar sauce. The donuts were warm and crispy, and the semi-freddo had a wonderful not-too-sweet, eggy taste.

Those donuts made me recall in vivid, mouth-watering detail my grandmother’s homemade donuts.

My grandmother, Grandma T we called her, was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants and a devout believer in the ability of food to communicate love. When she offered us seconds and thirds, saying, “Have some more,” which sounded like one word--“Hassummore”-- my four siblings and I knew early on that she really meant “I love you.”

During my childhood in northern Wisconsin, a family ritual on Sundays was to go to our grandparents’ house for an after-church snack which might be chewy molasses cookies, a slice of apple pie, ginger cream cookies drizzled with vanilla icing, or, my favorite, fresh, deep-fried cake donuts and donut holes.

Grandma T’s donuts emerged from their hot oil bath to rest briefly on a bed of flattened brown paper grocery bags. Then, still glistening, they were tossed into a smaller paper bag full of cinnamon-sugar to emerge fully clothed.

And that first bite. The hot, greasy, sugary crust gave way to a chewy cake that had a hint of nutmeg. It is my personal, but unprofessional, opinion that the inner-tube design of donuts was intended to maximize the surface area of fried, sweet goodness.

Now I know there some people who prefer the raised donut, especially here in the South where Krispy Kremes are king, and I know that in my adopted state of Louisiana the beignet is almost a holy sacrament, but I stand by my commitment to the cake donut.

"Hassummore!"