More doughnuts

We didn’t often have shop bought cakes when we were children, my mum was such an excellent baker, cake maker, everything maker that there was no need. I must have had doughnuts when I was a child, but I can’t really remember an occasion when we did. I do remember having huge meringues which seemed the size of a football to me, in the Dorothy Café in Cambridge, but that was  when my mum met her friends from time to time.

Ring doughnuts, possibly spelt donuts were something I remember from much later in life, and the first time I had them I wondered where the jam was! I was surprised therefore to see this advert in a supplement to The British Baker, a trade magazine from 1951, advertising dOnut machines for businesses to buy for take-away outlets. It was advertised by the British Doughnut Company Ltd. of 137 Clapham Road in London. The picture isn’t very clear – it is nearly sixty-four years old, but it shows rows and rows of ‘frosted donuts’ which look exactly the same as what we see today in Krispy Kreme for example.

A little recommendation by Mr W. Landau, managing director of one of the companies customers, the Capitol Food Parlour, mentions the fondant-dipped donuts. This must have been such a luxury after the war when so much including sugar had been rationed. Mr landau brags that on Sundays his company produced over 2,000 of the “new ring dOnuts”!