The Doughnut Fix Series, Book 1

by Jessie Janowitz

  It was that way with the cream. I’d been stirring forever when suddenly the waves I made with my spoon were there even when the spoon was gone.

  I dunked my finger and tasted.

  Sweet. Creamy. Rich. But something was wrong.

  I took another bite.

  Good, definitely good, but just good. No more than good.

  I hadn’t done all this work just for good! People didn’t write articles about good or dream about good or get up at the crack of dawn to eat good. Good was not life changing! My insides suddenly felt like they were on spin cycle.

  Had I forgotten something? I grabbed the recipe. No. I’d done everything just like I was supposed to.

  So what did this mean?

  Were life-changing doughnuts like the Tooth Fairy or the Man in the Moon or every other bit of magic in this world? A complete lie?

  Had the people of Petersville been deprived so long they couldn’t tell the difference between a good doughnut and a life-changing one?

  I put the cream in the fridge and sprinted upstairs.

  “Mom?” I whispered. She’d made it to the bed and was pretty clearly asleep. “Mom?” I said again, louder this time.

  “Mmm.”

  I lay down beside her and whispered right in her ear, “I made the cream.”

  “Mmm.”

  “It tastes like chocolate pudding.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Mom, please, wake up,” I begged, squeezing her shoulder.

  “I’m up. I’m up. What she’d do?”

  “Nothing. But the chocolate cream tastes like chocolate pudding.”

  “What?”

  “For the doughnuts. The chocolate cream tastes like chocolate pudding.”

  She pressed her hand to her stomach. “Can you not talk about food, please?”

  “Mom, please! I need your help.”

  She sat up slowly. “Okay, okay. Let’s just not say the words. So the…the C tastes like P. What’s wrong with that?”

  “It just tastes like normal pud—sorry, I mean, P. Not amazing P or C or whatever, and it has to be amazing.”

  “Ah, good not great. I’m familiar with the problem.”

  “Yeah, good not great.” I knew she’d get it.

  “Was it still hot, the C, when you tasted it?”

  “Yeah, warm.”

  “Finish. Finish the recipe. Make the doughnuts, I mean, the D. Make the D, fill the D, then decide. The whole is always bigger than the parts when you’re talking food. The magic happens when you put them together. PB&J is a totally different animal from the PB and the J and some B, right?”

  “I guess. Okay, I’ll finish and then see.” I was still worried, but it’s not as if I had a lot of options. “Sorry I woke you.”

  “Be careful when you fry, you know, because the oil—”

  “I know.”

  “How’s it going with Zoe?”

  “Fine. She’s in her room.”

  Or so I thought. But as I found out when I went to tell her that I was ready to go back down to the basement, Zoe was not in her room.

  Or the living room.

  Or the kitchen.

  Or Jeanine’s room.

  Or any of the other places I checked in the hope that I was wrong about where I thought she’d gone.

  Finally, I went back to the kitchen and threw open the basement door. A powdery cloud wafted out.

  “Zoe?”

  “Don’t come down here!”

  I started down the stairs. The cloud thickened.

  “Zoe!”

  White powder carpeted the basement like fake snow in the Christmas windows on Fifth Avenue. Four empty gallon bags of King Arthur Flour sat crumpled on the landing.

  “Go make doughnuts!” Zoe appeared out of the flour mist like a zombie in a horror movie.

  “Mom’s gonna kill you.”

  “Na-unh. I’m gonna clean it up.”

  “How?”

  “Dustbuster, nuddy,” she said as she clipped in and zoomed off. But this time, instead of squealing, she coughed and was coughing so hard by the time she reached the end, she couldn’t unclip herself.

  “My eyes hurt,” she said, rubbing them.

  I helped her down. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “But we have to clean up.”

  “We? You mean you and Tawatty Tawatty Dabu Dabu.”

  “They can’t help.” She plopped down on a mound of flour, and it whirled up around her. “They’re gone.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  She stared at the floor.

  “Zoe, do you know where they went?”

  “Home home.” Her bottom lip quivered.

  I guess Zoe was still waking up in the wrong place too.

  “C’mon. Let’s go,” I said.

  She didn’t move.

  “Don’t you want to help fill the doughnuts?”

  The corners of her mouth twitched. A second later, both arms shot in the air.

  “Forget it,” I said.

  Her arms jerked higher.

  “Ugh, fine,” I groaned as I hoisted every last bowling ball of her onto my hip, and clawed my way up the stairs.

  I poured water over her eyes in the bathroom until they felt better. Then we went into the kitchen and rolled out the dough together. Once it was half an inch thick like the recipe said, I let Zoe cut out circles with the top of a glass like Mom had taught us to do for biscuits.

  Hot oil plus Zoe seemed like an even worse combination than chili peppers plus chocolate, so back in the box she went while I fried the doughnuts. It took only two minutes for the dough circles to puff up golden, but the whole process took a while because I could only fry two at a time, and as soon as I took them out of the oil, I had to roll them in a mixture of sugar, salt, and vanilla bean.

  When all ten doughnuts were fried and sugared and cool enough not to burn off your fingerprints—I’m missing four—I put Zoe on a stool at the counter and handed her the gun filled with cream.

  “Okay. Now, nice and slow,” I said and carefully pushed the tip of the gun into a doughnut.

  As Zoe squeezed the plunger, the doughnut inflated like it was taking a breath.

  “Whoa!” she said, her eyes widening with the doughnut.

  Before long, chocolate oozed out the other side.

  “Okay, that’s good… Stop… Stop! Stop!”

  “You don’t have to yell,” she said, finally letting go.

  “Watch it or I’ll French at you.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “You can’t French.”

  I held the doughnut up close to my face and breathed it in.

  Cinnamon French toast…funnel cakes…hot chocolate… My mouth went off like a sprinkler. Please, please, please let them taste as good as they smell, I prayed. I crossed my fingers, opened my mouth, and—

  Ow!

  I looked down just in time to see Zoe pulling away. There was a wet mark on my sleeve.

  “You bit me? I let you use the gun and you bit me?”

  Zoe’s bottom lip puffed out. “I wanna doughnut.”

  “And you’ll get one.”

  “But how come you get to go first?”

  “Because I made them.”

  “I helped.”

  I thought for a minute then held up the I-mean-business finger my parents are always using on Zoe. “Don’t ever bite me again. You want to bite everybody else, that’s up to you, but not me. Got it?”

  “Got it. We don’t bite Tris.”

  “All right then, here.” I handed her the doughnut. “Don’t eat yet. Just hold it.”

  Zoe cradled the doughnut as if it were a living thing.

  I took another doughnut and shot it full of cream. “Okay, ready?”
<
br />   She nodded.

  “Three…two—”

  “One!” Zoe yelled and crammed as much of the doughnut as would fit into her mouth.

  I was still holding mine. It was weird, but after everything I’d done, suddenly I couldn’t take a bite. If it was just a good doughnut, I didn’t want to know.

  “Mmm,” Zoe moaned and gobbled up the other half. That was a pretty good sign, but it didn’t mean much since I could fill a dog biscuit with chocolate cream and Zoe would go crazy for it. But then, with chocolate leaking out of the corners of her mouth, Zoe said, “I don’t want to be president anymore. When I’m growed up, I’m gonna be a doughnut maker too!”

  That’s when I had to know: Had I really just made life-changing doughnuts?

  I took a bite, then closed my eyes and focused on all the different things happening in my mouth: springy cake bursting with vanilla; sugar and salt crystals crunching between my teeth; waves of chocolate rolling slow and smooth across my tongue. Mom had been right. The whole was so much bigger than the parts, so much bigger even than something you just tasted. Taste was only in your mouth. This went zinging all over from my toes to my fingers to my brain.

  Phew…these weren’t just good doughnuts. They were picture-in-the-paper-get-up-at-dawn-flying-carpet doughnuts.

  Phew? Yeah, it’s not how I thought I’d feel either. Sure, I’d expected a little phew, but mostly what I’d expected was Shazzam! And there was none of that. Just phew and kind of a now-what emptiness.

  What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I taking my victory lap around the kitchen? Or running for the phone to call Josh? Or running upstairs to tell Mom? Or just plain shoving another mind-blowing doughnut in my mouth?

  “I don’t feel so good,” Zoe said and lay down on the kitchen floor.

  I looked over at the tray of doughnuts. Two unfilled ones were missing.

  Zoe lifted her shirt and looked down. “Belly says doughnuts are bad.”

  “Tell Belly not to be such a pig,” I said and lay down on the floor next to her. The phew was gone, and all that was left was the now-what emptiness growing bigger every second like a black hole.

  “Does your tummy hurt too?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Make circles. It helps,” she said, petting her belly.

  “I don’t think circles will work this time.”

  As Zoe groaned and rolled around on the floor next to me, I tried to happy thought my way to Shazzam:

  Happy Thought #1: Winnie’s doughnuts were mind-blowing.

  Happy Thought #2: Winnie’s doughnuts were going to make the Doughnut Stop a huge success.

  Happy Thought #3: Winnie’s—

  And that’s when it hit me. I knew what was wrong. And I knew exactly what I had to do to fix it.

  I jumped up and ran around the kitchen gathering ingredients.

  “What are you doing?” Zoe groaned.

  “Making more doughnuts.”

  “Uggg. Why?”

  Mom always talked about needing to make a recipe her own, but I’d never understood why before now.

  Anybody could follow a recipe. Robots could do that and even did in those big cookie factories where they made Oreos and Fig Newtons. But those robots weren’t really making something; they were just following instructions the same way they do when they make cars or anything else. I didn’t want doughnuts from the Doughnut Stop to be something a robot could make you with Winnie’s three cards. I wanted to put something of me in there too.

  Robots couldn’t change a recipe. They did everything exactly the same each time. But I didn’t have to. I’d followed enough recipes to know how they worked, and I could experiment and make this recipe my own. I didn’t mean I wanted to make Tris Levin’s Chocolate Cream Doughnuts. That’s not what this was about. The chicken soup Mom made was still Grandma Esme’s Cold Cure Soup even though she never made it exactly the same way. Without Winnie, Petersville never would have had chocolate cream doughnuts, and without her recipe, I’d never be able to bring them back. They’d always be Winnie Hammond’s Famous Chocolate Cream Doughnuts. I just hoped I’d be able to get her to understand that when I told her that I’d tinkered with her recipe. I was less worried about how Josh would take it since I was pretty sure he’d be okay with it as long as the doughnuts were still mind-blowing.

  I ran to the refrigerator and pulled a bowl of leftovers from the top shelf.

  “What’s that?” Zoe asked.

  “Mashed potatoes.”

  “For the doughnuts?”

  “Yup.”

  “I don’t want your doughnuts,” Zoe said as she rolled over onto her side and closed her eyes.

  I know. I know. Mashed potato doughnuts? Sounds even crazier than olive oil ice cream. But Mom had told me once that if you substitute mashed potatoes for some of the flour, they’ll make whatever you’re baking lighter. Winnie’s doughnuts were awesome, but I wanted mine fluffier, and I was going to use mashed potatoes to do it. Mom’s mashed potatoes were just potato. This was for Jeanine, who was always complaining about how Mom had to “fancy” everything up. Mom made them every week, and we always had a ton of leftovers. If this worked, I figured I could just chip in for potatoes.

  So, as Zoe napped on the kitchen floor, I mapped out a new recipe.

  After an hour of thinking and looking through cookbooks, I had a plan. I’d come up with three new ingredients: mashed potatoes for the dough and balsamic vinegar and instant coffee (no caffeine) for the chocolate cream. Since the doughnut was so sweet, I wanted to make the cream less sweet, more chocolaty. One of the cookbooks said a little balsamic vinegar gives chocolate a stronger flavor. The coffee was a trick I’d seen Mom use when she doesn’t want milk chocolate to taste too sweet. The instant stuff just dissolves so it’s easy to use. I’d have to be careful not to put in too much though, or I’d end up with mocha cream doughnuts.

  I made three small batches of dough. In the first one, I used mashed potatoes for half of the flour, then in the second, I used it for only a third, and in the last one, just a quarter.

  While the dough was rising, I experimented with the cream. On their own, the vinegar and the coffee gave the chocolate exactly what I was going for, but together, they made it a bit bitter. In the end, I chose the coffee because I liked the way it upped the cocoa flavor.

  Once I’d fried and rolled the doughnuts, I tasted one from each batch. The winner was obvious. It was by far the lightest. It had the same yummy flavor as Winnie’s, but it tasted more like cake. Since mashed potatoes were supposed to make the doughnuts lighter, it surprised me that the lightest one had the smallest amount of potato. It just goes to show you that in cooking, more isn’t always better. That meant I’d just need one cup of mashed potatoes per batch, which would be easy to swing even if I ended up having to make them myself.

  By the time I was ready to start stuffing, it was getting dark and Zoe was just waking up from her marathon nap.

  “Feel better?” I said.

  She rolled onto her side and sat up. “I’m hungry.”

  I wasn’t surprised. It had been almost two hours since she’d eaten the doughnuts, and I’d forgotten to feed us lunch. We were both in need of some real food.

  Minutes later, we were eating leftover chicken looking out the window at rabbits playing freeze tag on the front lawn. Something you may not know: rabbits are seriously good freezers.

  “Did you really put mashed potato in the doughnuts?” Zoe asked, pointing to the empty bowl with her chicken leg.

  “Yup, and they’re awesome.”

  Zoe swore she wouldn’t even taste my doughnuts, but she did want to stuff them. She was super into the pastry gun. So, when we’d finished our chicken and washed our hands, I spooned my new cream into the gun and let her fill the three doughnuts I had left from the winning batch. When she’d stuffed them al
l, she held one up and studied it as if she’d be able to spot the part with mashed potato and eat around it.

  This time, I couldn’t wait to taste my creation. I knew the cream was mind-blowing, and I knew the doughnuts were mind-blowing, but how would they be together? Had I made something entirely new like PB&J or just some D stuffed with some C?

  I picked up a doughnut and knocked it gently into the one Zoe was still inspecting. “Cheers!”

  The lighter, cakier doughnut floated for a second on my tongue, then melted into the chocolate…

  I’d done it!

  Because the chocolate was more rich than sweet, my taste buds craved more doughnut. The doughnut and the cream worked together in a way they hadn’t before. This wasn’t just some D plus some C. It was picture-in-the-paper and get-up-at-dawn and flying-carpet just like it had been before. It was all those things, and it was mine and it was Winnie’s and it was life changing.

  I guess after seeing the look on my face, Zoe couldn’t hold out any longer because she finally nibbled at the doughnut. As she chewed, her eyes opened a little wider, and before she’d even swallowed the first bite, she took another one that got her all the way to the chocolate. Her eyes rolled back a few seconds later, and she made this sound that was part giggle and part sigh, like this doughnut, my doughnut, was something she’d been missing forever and finally found.

  “Let’s put mashed potatoes in everything!” she said and sucked chocolate off her thumb with a loud smack.

  After that, I was so full of Shazzam, I agreed to help Zoe clean up the basement. I even promised not to tell my parents about the mess she’d made.

  I was just lugging the vacuum cleaner up from the basement when I heard Mom calling me. She was standing at the top of the stairs, still in her bathrobe but looking less green than before.