LIQUORICE BAKED DOUGHNUTS

The Book of Cake is the book I should have written in the past two weeks or so as I was once again unconsciously sliding my way to self-sabotage, one mouthful of fried plantain at a time, and it should have been a sacred book with an austere but not too daunting cover and vintage-looking brownish pages because we have decided that’s in fashion this season (even in the UK), and you would find it inside drawers in bed side tables in hotel rooms.

In this book of cake, it is written that it’s completely fine to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown as you spot a metaphor being translated into a simile in a learning session guide in Brazilian Portuguese and to take a day off work just so that you can go for lunch with someone from work and so is to burst into tears right in the middle of Regent Street on a Sunday afternoon because you’ll be turning thirty in a second but your mum and dad still sponsor all your clothes and drain unblockers and maple syrup; because The Book of Cake suggests that whatever happens, you eventually get a grip and bake your life away and make those liquorice doughnuts that you had decided to bake on that one night out with the other two musketeers; and put to good use the precious liquorice root powder that your mamma hunted down for you in Italy (and chocolate. There’s got to be chocolate); and why not, consider patenting and marketing them as ‘Pontefract Doughnuts’ or ‘Rough Doughnuts’ or ‘David (Francis Wilson) Doughnuts’, as they may well make you rich and famous and people would want to own a 1% share of your baking business.

What The Book of Cake in essence teaches you, is that sometimes you’ve got to allow yourself to help and be helped; to take two lemon sweets from the meeting room (one for Dave); to let the boys wait in an orderly queue, although not for unreasonably long; to pay bills and use vouchers; to treat someone with overpriced organic pizza squares; to be treated with Indian samosas, lunch-packed especially for your cab ride home; and to make cake for people that are all special like that and may not even realise it; because as it turns out, sometimes you can be quite difficult to read, kind of like a book that was never written.

The Book of Cake was also never written (neither was The Book of James for that matter), but if it ever will be, the very last verses would read something very pregnant and introspective, such as, 
‘Create a little bit of havoc
but then make cake
share it with loved ones
and go fix your stupid head’.
Amen.

LIQUORICE BAKED DOUGHNUTS
with white chocolate glaze

240g (scant 2 cups) plain flour

130g (2/3 cup) unrefined caster sugar

1 tablespoon liquorice root powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

½ teaspoon salt

225g (1 cup) soya yoghurt or other non-dairy yoghurt

180ml (3/4 cup) chocolate flavoured soya milk or other non-dairy milk

90ml (1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons) sunflower oil or other flavourless oil

White chocolate glaze:

120ml (1/2 cup) soya cream or other non-dairy cream

150g (1 cup) chopped vegan white chocolate

Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F) and lightly grease two doughnut tins. In a bowl mix together flour, sugar, liquorice powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. In a separate bowl, mix yoghurt, chocolate milk and oil. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and mix everything together with a spoon until just combined. Spoon the mixture evenly into the doughnut tins and bake for 15 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack. Next make the glaze: place the cream on medium heat until it starts simmering, then remove from the heat, add the chopped chocolate and stir until melted and well combined. Dip the top of each doughnut into the glaze then sprinkle with powdered or chopped liquorice sweets.