True Blue: Baked blueberry doughnuts make most of fresh berries

I’ve never made cake doughnuts — or yeast doughnuts, for that matter — but when my friend gave me a silicone doughnut pan, well, I had to change my doughnut-slacker ways. She also gave me a bag of apple-cider doughnut mix, which I’m eager to try, but since we’re in the middle of summer I wanted to make doughnuts from scratch with local blueberries. Sadly, we missed Hockinson’s annual blueberry festival by about an hour, but the surrounding U-pick farms were still open. Because we’d just come from swimming in Battle Ground Lake and standing out in a hot field in a sticky swimsuit wasn’t appealing, we bought a pre-picked bag of berries. They were so big and sweet, I was worried we were going to eat every last one on the drive home to Washougal.

The next morning I hauled out the waffle iron and made blueberry waffles. I still haven’t figured out how to put blueberries in the batter without causing the waffles to stick to the waffle pan like a limpet to a rock, so we just piled fresh blueberries on top of our waffles. We were out of maple syrup so I made blueberry sauce by boiling blueberries and sugar, and I served the waffles with a half-pint of freshly whipped cream. It was just about heaven.

But now I need more blueberry confections. It turns out there are loads of recipes for baked blueberry doughnuts. I found simple instructions on a not-too-serious website called “Worn Slap Out: Recipes for the Joyfully Exhausted,” which you can visit at wornslapout.com. As is my wont, I adjusted the recipe to use salted butter and added vanilla, ginger and lemon zest, because those are all good flavor partners for blueberries. After the doughnuts are done baking, you can dust them with powdered sugar or make a lemon glaze. The recipe says it makes six doughnuts, but my doughnut molds must be very small, because I got 12.

I realize that this recipe needs a doughnut pan, though I try to avoid offering recipes that require special equipment. I’m sorry about that, but on the upside, doughnut pans are cheap — anywhere from $8 to $20, from silicone to nonstick steel. They’re no more expensive than muffin pans and who knows, maybe you’ll end up baking doughnuts more often than muffins. They’re both essentially cake, but there’s only one shape you can put your nose through.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease your doughnut pan. Next, mix 1 cup flour, ½ cup packed brown sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon baking powder with 1 teaspoon powdered ginger and 1 tablespoon lemon zest. Set aside. Now, whisk ½ cup buttermilk, yogurt or sour cream with 2 tablespoons melted butter, 1 egg and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Blend the wet and dry ingredients together and gently fold in 1 heaping cup fresh blueberries. Don’t stir too vigorously because you don’t want to mash up those pretty berries.

I should add that when I went to the store for ingredients, I completely forgot the buttermilk. I made my own buttermilk by mixing 1 tablespoon lemon juice with enough milk to make 1 cup. I let the mixture rest for about 10 minutes before using it, so it would have enough time to curdle. It’s disgustingly chunky, but it gets all mixed up in the batter anyway, so just try not to look at it while you’re pouring it into the mix.

The recipe says to put the dough in a plastic bag and cut the corner off, then squeeze it into the doughnut shapes. While sensible, this seemed like too much trouble to me, so I just spooned the batter in. Now for the fun part: whack the doughnut pan on the counter a few times to get the batter to even out and force any bubbles in the batter to rise to the top. Work out all your anger issues and really get your blood flowing. Now calm down because you’re clearly stressed. I should note that silicone trays are extremely wobbly, so you can’t whack them or you’ll have doughnut batter all over your kitchen and your face. Place the silicone tray on a cookie sheet and whack that. When you’re ready to put the doughnuts in the oven, just leave the silicone tray on the cookie sheet.

Bake the doughnuts for 20 to 22 minutes or until the dough turns golden and they’re a little springy when you poke them. If you burn your finger, yell to elicit maximum sympathy from anyone standing nearby. You are working very hard to make these doughnuts and they ought to feel at least a little guilty. Take the doughnuts out of the oven and let them cool for about 10 minutes. Invert the pan and hopefully the doughnuts will fall right out. If not — say, a blueberry is stuck to the bottom — take a knife and gently coax the doughnut from its little cave.

My doughnuts came out extremely moist and almost solid blue on the bottom from all the berries. Because my doughnut molds are so small, the blueberries didn’t have much room to spread out and all got stuck together. They were so moist that I decided to skip the glaze and dust them with copious amounts of powdered sugar. As Ralph Nader famously said, “If God hadn’t meant for us to eat sugar, he wouldn’t have invented dentists.”