Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Friends, cooking, board games, it’s all good. This year the party spilled over into a separate event on Friday, which was great fun. I decided to try and reproduce maple-glazed, apple bacon doughnuts from Dynamo Doughnuts, which I’ve never had but had seen on an episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate. Did we succeed?

Oh yes.

Several folks asked for the recipe, so here it is.

Maple-Glazed, Apple Bacon Doughnuts

(Adapted from Alton Brown’s Yeast Doughnuts)

For the doughnuts

• 1 1/4 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons apple juice
• 2.5 oz shortening
• 2 packages instant yeast
• 1/3 cup warm water
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 23 oz all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
• 2 medium apples (gala or fuji)
• 1 lb bacon
• 1/2 – 1 gallons peanut oil

For the glaze

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 4 tablespoons of maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract

(Will make approximately 50 doughnuts)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place bacon a rack inside a foil-lined half sheet pan. Cook bacon for 15-20 minutes, until crisp. Reserve rendered bacon fat. When bacon has cooled a bit, dice bacon and split in half.

Warm milk in sauce pan until hot enough to melt shortening. Pour milk over shortening and stir until combined.

Place yeast in warm water for 5 minutes.

Peel and finely dice apples. Place 1 tablespoon of reserved bacon fat into a frying pan and saute apples over medium heat. Keep diced apples moving constantly until they give up some liquid and pick up a hint of color, about 5 minutes. Remove apples and any remaining bacon fat from pan and add to milk/shortening mixture along with 1 tablespoon of reserved bacon fat.

Lightly beat eggs.

Combine water/yeast, apple juice, eggs, nutmeg, milk/shortening/apple mixture, nutmeg, sugar, salt, half the bacon, and half the flower in the bowl of a stand mixer with paddle attachment. Mix on slow speed until flour is incorporated, then increase speed to medium. When well mixed, stop mixer and add remaining flour. Again, slowly increase speed until well mixed. It will be very sticky.

Switch to dough hook and mix on medium until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and forms a shiny ball. Move the sticky, elastic dough to a bowl and allow it to rise for one hour, until it has doubled in size.

Dump dough out onto well floured surface. Flour your hand and gently flatten dough until 3/4" thick. Flour a 2" and 1" biscuit cutter. Carefully cut out 2" disks and move to wax paper, the use the smaller cutter to cut out the holes. When done, cover with more wax paper and allow to rise for another 30 minutes.

In a heavy stock pot, add enough peanut oil to fill to 2-3" deep and heat to 365 degrees.

Prepare the glaze by whisking together the powdered sugar, maple syrup, vanilla, and 6 tablespoons of reserved bacon fat.

Working in batches of 4-6 doughnuts, fry doughnuts until golden brown and delicious on both sides, about 1 minute per side, using chop sticks to gently flip the doughnuts. When done, transfer to cooling rack and let cool for about a minute before dipping in glaze. Return to cooling rack and sprinkle with bacon from the other half you reserved.

(This works best with two people, one frying, one glazing.)

The most difficult bit will be giving the glaze about 5 minutes to set up. Doughnuts will still be warm and delicious!