Oh. My. Gosh. I'm in shock because I just made maple bars.
I knew this recipe would take many steps and lots of time, so it's the first thing I started this morning, well rested after a great night's sleep. I started by boiling the potatoes to make mashed potatoes. Next, since Uncle Ralph tells me this recipe will make 80-100 doughnuts, I get out my calculator and pencil to find out what quantities I'll need of each ingredient to make one fourth of the recipe since I'm not feeding a family of hockey players.
I made the mashed potatoes and am ready to go. Right off I have four times as many mashed potatoes as I need because I boiled the potatoes before I did my calculations. Oh well, leftovers are always OK. Next, I melted the butter in the microwave so it would be cool when I needed it.
"Scald the milk and mix in potatoes or potato flakes. Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Put 2T sugar in water & dissolve before adding yeast. Melt butter and let cool. Put sourdough starter in big bowl and mix in sugar, salt, butter, eggs, nutmeg, and potatoes. Mix well. Add yeast and stir. Mix the soda with 1/2 cup flour and stir in. Add enough flour to make a soft dough. This will vary, it depends on how thick your sourdough starter is. Usually 5-7 cups."
The quantity of flour worried me because I was running low, but then I realized I only needed one fourth that, and then I realized that that although I had quartered the quantity for ingredients listed above the instructions, I did not adjust the ingredients in the above verbiage. GULP! Too much liquid, which explains why the dough was so sticky. So I kept adding flour until the dough felt kneadable. At this point, I just needed to move ahead and hope things turned out.
I kneaded for 5 minutes, then put the dough in a greased bowl, covered it with a towel, and put it on the dining room table to soak up the warmth of the sun on this beautiful winter day.
I checked back an hour and a half later and found that it had indeed doubled in size! I punched it down and put it on a cutting board covered in flour. While I like doughnuts, I LOVE maple bars. In fact, when things were so stressful at work last fall, I was a drive through customer at Krispy Kreme too many days on my commute in to my office. So I cut the dough into rectangles; I knew just the 'favorite glaze' to make this work. The dough was so pliable I didn't even need to roll it out; I just patted it down to about 1/2" thich and cut. I put my rectangles on greased plastic wrap to rise uncovered for 45 minutes.
In the meantime, I made a pan of the Quick Caramel Frosting from two weeks ago. I loved that frosting and ate my way through the entire cake, a piece at a time, directly from the freezer. Today I substituted mapleine for the vanilla. TADA - Maple Frosting!
Forty-five minutes later I couldn't tell if any 'rising' had taken place or not. Let's assume it did. I heated vegetable oil in a deep pan and put the first rectangle in. I turned it after two and a half minutes with tongs, then in another two and a half minutes I took it out and put it face down in the pan of maple frosting. I let it sit there while I put another rectangle in to cook (fry). I then took the coooked bar out of the frosting and put it face up on a cookie sheet. Wow - it looks like a maple bar. I kept an assembly line of two at a time, and then three at a time, moving along: fry, turn, fry, frost, done.
I ended up with a dozen large maple bars. They taste very good and homemade. I'm still kind of amazed that I did this.
I knew this recipe would take many steps and lots of time, so it's the first thing I started this morning, well rested after a great night's sleep. I started by boiling the potatoes to make mashed potatoes. Next, since Uncle Ralph tells me this recipe will make 80-100 doughnuts, I get out my calculator and pencil to find out what quantities I'll need of each ingredient to make one fourth of the recipe since I'm not feeding a family of hockey players.
I made the mashed potatoes and am ready to go. Right off I have four times as many mashed potatoes as I need because I boiled the potatoes before I did my calculations. Oh well, leftovers are always OK. Next, I melted the butter in the microwave so it would be cool when I needed it.
"Scald the milk and mix in potatoes or potato flakes. Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Put 2T sugar in water & dissolve before adding yeast. Melt butter and let cool. Put sourdough starter in big bowl and mix in sugar, salt, butter, eggs, nutmeg, and potatoes. Mix well. Add yeast and stir. Mix the soda with 1/2 cup flour and stir in. Add enough flour to make a soft dough. This will vary, it depends on how thick your sourdough starter is. Usually 5-7 cups."
The quantity of flour worried me because I was running low, but then I realized I only needed one fourth that, and then I realized that that although I had quartered the quantity for ingredients listed above the instructions, I did not adjust the ingredients in the above verbiage. GULP! Too much liquid, which explains why the dough was so sticky. So I kept adding flour until the dough felt kneadable. At this point, I just needed to move ahead and hope things turned out.
I kneaded for 5 minutes, then put the dough in a greased bowl, covered it with a towel, and put it on the dining room table to soak up the warmth of the sun on this beautiful winter day.
I checked back an hour and a half later and found that it had indeed doubled in size! I punched it down and put it on a cutting board covered in flour. While I like doughnuts, I LOVE maple bars. In fact, when things were so stressful at work last fall, I was a drive through customer at Krispy Kreme too many days on my commute in to my office. So I cut the dough into rectangles; I knew just the 'favorite glaze' to make this work. The dough was so pliable I didn't even need to roll it out; I just patted it down to about 1/2" thich and cut. I put my rectangles on greased plastic wrap to rise uncovered for 45 minutes.
In the meantime, I made a pan of the Quick Caramel Frosting from two weeks ago. I loved that frosting and ate my way through the entire cake, a piece at a time, directly from the freezer. Today I substituted mapleine for the vanilla. TADA - Maple Frosting!
Forty-five minutes later I couldn't tell if any 'rising' had taken place or not. Let's assume it did. I heated vegetable oil in a deep pan and put the first rectangle in. I turned it after two and a half minutes with tongs, then in another two and a half minutes I took it out and put it face down in the pan of maple frosting. I let it sit there while I put another rectangle in to cook (fry). I then took the coooked bar out of the frosting and put it face up on a cookie sheet. Wow - it looks like a maple bar. I kept an assembly line of two at a time, and then three at a time, moving along: fry, turn, fry, frost, done.
I ended up with a dozen large maple bars. They taste very good and homemade. I'm still kind of amazed that I did this.
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