A sheet of metal with a hole in it designed to slip in behind or in front of the colour frame on a lighting instrument in theatrical lighting. The doughnut's central hole lets light pass, and cleans up excess reflections to allow a gobo's pattern to resolve properly. Easily prepared using an X-acto knife and aluminium pie tins.

Doughnuts consist of two varieties, cake doughnuts, and yeast doughnuts (see nodes for recipe). Cake doughnuts are denser and are typically coated with powdered sugar or cinnamon. Yeast doughnuts are very light and have a chewier texture, and are often glazed or iced.

In the Australian petrolhead and English boy racer (automobile enthusiast) vernacular, a doughnut is a deep circular ditch left in the dirt by doing high-speed handbrake turns; or alternatively, the rubber circles left on the pavement from performing the same maneuver.

The etymology of the word doughnut is this: You'd wonder why they were called dough-nuts when they are definitely made of dough, but aren't generally made with nuts. It has nothing to do with nuts; doughnut is a simplification of doughnoughts. They are made of dough and shaped in a ring like a nought. Makes sense when you think about it, doesn't it? As for donuts, well, I imagine that's just another americanism for someone who is too lazy for a couple extra letters.

This writeup is incomplete without an actual recipe for making this tasty baked good, one of the few to combine two American favorites, grease and sugar! (Others include funnel cake and deep fried Oreos.) My mother made us doughnuts on occasion, but her recipe was rather vague. I got her to write down her formula and her permission to post it here, for those with a sense of adventure and good health insurance.

Muse's Mother's Quick-n-Easy Doughnut Recipe

You will need:

  1. Put the afore-mentioned quantity of oil in the pan, and put the pan on the stove. Heat oil in the usual manner you'd heat something in a pan.
  2. Open the package of biscuits.
  3. Use a doughnut-cutter, knife, or spoon to cut out the center of the biscuit.
    (Spoons are handy to keep it a rounded hole instead of a knife gash.) If this is too complicated, or when you have leftover dough, just roll the dough into balls and make doughnut holes instead!
  4. Drop the vaguely doughnut (hole)-shaped mass of dough into the oil in the pan. Fry. Flip over when necessary. Fry other side.
  5. Remove doughnuts from oil when they look vaguely like plain donuts, preferably with some utensil and not your hand. Dab the excess oil from them with paper towels when cool enough to handle.
  6. Drop the doughnuts into powdered suger while they're still relatively hot and oil-moistened. Flip over to coat both sides. Roll it around for a while. Have fun!
  7. Put doughnuts on a plate, let cool until you can put them in your mouth, and serve! Yummy!

everything2 needs more recipes.

Dough"nut (?), n.

A small cake (usually sweetened) fried in a kettle of boiling lard.

 

© Webster 1913.

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