Culturally Confused Donuts, or An African, an American, and a Mexican Walk into a Brunch

It started with the wedding presents. My sister bought us some donut pans, pre-planning bucolic mornings of baking and tending children and generally having an idyllic American morning.

I saw this challenge and I accepted. When the opportunity arose, I texted my sister and asked for a recipe. She replied and I checked that I had the ingredients necessary, which involved opening the cabinet, verifying that there was in fact something there.

The next morning, John and I slept in and when I finally arose, I gave him an appropriate kiss on the cheek before getting up and starting the baking. Everything was great until I got to step 1: getting out the ingredients. My gluten-free flour mix had about a sprinkling of flour, not the 2 ⅔ cups I needed. I forged on with my enterprising spirit and looked for alternatives.

And that’s when I realized that my husband and I are culturally messy. He’s from Salaga, Northern Ghana. I’m from Rogers, Northwest Arkansas, but during my formative years of adulthood, I lived with a Mexican brother-in-law and two sisters who are fluent in Spanish. So we often spoke more Spanish than English, and our foods consisted of a lot of street tacos, queso fresco, and chorizo. This was exacerbated by the fact that my American family is 2 parents and 12 kids, so my American cooking knowledge was for a minimum of about 20 servings. That’s not useful for 2 people living together. So my cooking style, by accident of birth and college years, is comfortably Mexican. Add into that the fact that most of my family has Celiac disease, so I’m firmly gluten intolerant.

So there I was staring at my cabinets hoping they would offer me a solution to having no flour. And they did, in their own special way: John’s cocoyam fufu flour, and my masa tortilla flour. And a bag of xanthan gum for good measure. This was not going to be easy.

I sat out those things pretending they were normal ingredients in donuts, and by the time I had mixed the butter and sugar, John was up and strolled into the dining/baking room. Seeing his precious fufu flour out, he quickly picked it up and headed to the cabinet to put it away.

“Oh, babe, is it okay if I use some of that? I don’t have enough regular flour.”

Looking skeptical, he put it back on the table. When I got to the part where I was mixing the flour, he watched me carefully as I was sprinkling the powdered cocoyam-cassava mix on top of the corn masa.

“Babe, you’re putting too much of it. You know how our flour is. It will shoot.”

“Shoot?”

“Yeah. Like when you add water, it will shoot.”

“Okay.” I didn’t know how their flour was. I didn’t know what shoot meant when it came to flour. So I went with my gut, which just happened to be what the recipe said, and added enough to make 2 ⅔ cups.

The “batter” was dough. “Shoot” meant it soaks up moisture and what was supposed to be a thick batter was the consistency of cookie dough. It was like pretending cream cheese was the same as milk. It held the weight of a spatula upright. It was supposed to be thin enough to sort of pour into the donut pan. I scooped and smashed it into circles and hoped that the oven would perform its chemical reaction magic and leave me with magazine-worthy donuts. After all, my reputation as an American housewife was on the line. Even a good businesswoman still has to be able to perform the wifely duties of being a sweet hostess.

Well, 11 minutes later the truth was revealed.

They were UGLY. If you went to a donut store and they gave you that, you would walk away without paying.

I had two things going in my favor though: John isn’t used to normal donuts, and cinnamon sugar.

I waited for the right time for them to cool, dropped them into my cinnamon sugar bag, and one by one they emerged the same, but a little sparklier.

I set the table with the coffee and saucers and told John it was ready.

And it turned out, despite the looks, they weren’t bad. They tasted a little bit like tortillas, a little bit like fufu, but mostly like a breakfast sweet bread.

I guess when I think about it, our marriage is a lot like those donuts. Not what you expect, not quite magazine-ready, but sweet and definitely a learning experience.