TWD: Mrs. Vogel's Scherben

aka... fried dough shards with cinnamon sugar and powdered sugar.

I've never been a fan of the "fried dough" foods. Never really liked doughnuts (although I will eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts sometimes), can't stand funnel cakes or elephant ears. It's just personal preference. I prefer my sweet baked goods to be more sweet and less doughy.

But, I gotta admit... the picture of these in Dorie's Book, Baking: from My Home to Yours looked interesting to me. They looked less "doughy" and more fried and crispy. I've been waiting for someone to choose these and finally, Teanna of Spork or Foon did just that (and please check out her blog, she's hilarious and one helluva cook and baker!).

But, the timing, Teanna... ohhh the timing. The timing just happens to be whilst I'm in the middle of a furious diet/exercise regime where I'm trying to get down to my ultimate weight (still have like 20 pounds to go and less than 3 weeks to make it. Oy vey) before my 30th birthday rolls around on February 1.  So while the actual ingredients are very reasonable (1 tablespoon of butter? thats it!), the actual frying of the dough is where the diet train stops and rears it's no fun head. Wah Wah.

Luckily, Caitlin (who recently got engaged! Congrats!) had the brilliant idea to try and bake these shards of dough. So... bake them is what I did!

Unfortunately... my diet-mindedness crept even further into the recipe by coming up with the not-so-brilliant idea of using half white whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour.

What I ended up with... were essentially Wheat Thins heavily dusted with powdered sugar. Seriously, the texture and the flavor of the baked dough was exactly that of Wheat Thins! Which.. honestly, I was kind of stoked about... I mean.. normally when I try to healthify a recipe and it doesn't turn out right, it just turns into absolute rubbish! But this is actually something I might could tinker with and make my own Wheat Thins! Just add some savory herbs and spices and bam!

I do think that these would be really tasty if you made them per the recipe and fried them in a vat of oil. So, if you're into the fried dough, you should give them a try, because they were surprisingly easy!

Mrs. Vogel's Scherben

recipe by Dorie Greenspan

So, yeah, I tinkered. A little too much. I used half white whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour. Then... instead of brushing with oil before baking (like Caitlin suggested), I just spritzed with cooking spray. Honestly.. the texture (though not the intentional texture for the actual recipe) turned out really well and would make a GREAT cracker. Luckily, I only baked up half the dough, and am freezing the rest to make my own savory cracker out of it sometime soon!

Check out Teanna's Blog for the recipe.