My Donut Business.com

My business partners and I tried another experiment using liquid soybean oil from Sam's and the partially hydroginated soybean oil from Lil Orbits. It should be noted that the ingrediants for each were the same according to the nutritonal labels, but the amounts of each ingrediant were not stipulated. So, exactly how much citric acid is in there? Does it really matter? Who knows. There was one glaring difference between the oils, however. The Lil Orbits oil contained transfat while the Sam's oil did not. I guess you could say we were trying to make healthy donuts with the Sam's oil! Okay, maybe not. But, we were interested to see it there was a taste difference.
We started with the Sam's oil, and I made a small mistake in preparing the batter. Two weeks ago during our last taste test session we noted that if prepared exactly to the directions the batter set up quickly. This made it too thick to pour through the applicator. I noted the same consistency again and added a bit more water to the batter to thin it out. Apparently, I added too much as the batter became too stringy. Ugh! Frustrating! So much for finding a happy medium.
Instead of coming out in nice rings through the applicator the batter came out in clumps with strings attached. Someone commented that it looked we were deep frying tarantulas. Yum Yum! The cooking time was the same, but more bubbles were noted rising through the batter in the oil kind of like what you see when cooking pancakes. With the thinner batter more tiny pieces were left in the oil follwing the cooking process "dirtying" the oil. Note to self--easy on the water.
Surprisingly, I did notice a taste difference between the oils. We tried both sets of donuts together, some hot and some cold after sitting for an hour. Same results. The donuts made in Lil Orbits oil were slightly better with a pleasant cake-like taste. The donuts cooked in the Sam's oil were a bit heavier and greasier. Even though there was a noticable difference in was only slight, and in my opinion insignificant. When running a business it's a no-brainer that costs must be controlled. Getting oil from Sam's is less expensive than from Lil Orbits mostly because of shipping costs. The Lil Orbits does make a tastier donut, but it would also have to be a more expensive donut to turn a profit. I can say that the donuts we made last time with the pure vegetable oil were my least favorite with the ones being made with the Sam's oil being superior.
My business partners and I plan on videotaping the donut making process next week using our Lil Orbits test kit. Stay tuned!