Hi friends. Well, these past couple of days have been just about the worst luck of my life. I had this great vacation planned to Ireland and all things just went down the gutter. Here’s how this week started…
My grandpa passed away on Sunday and I had to fly to Vegas to attend his funeral on Wednesday with two days notice. I had a trip to Dublin planned for my DB and I on Thursday for a week, but we were flying standby. We had called the airline the night before to check the flight loads and they told us that it was “good availability” and we shouldn’t have a problem getting on.
We took the first flight from SFO-JFK on Thursday morning so that we could catch the redeye to Dublin at 9:15 PM the same night from JFK. When we got to the ticket counter, they informed us that the flight was completely sold out and there were 24 standbys on the list. For those unfamiliar with flying standby, it basically means that you wait to fill in any open seats there may be by seniority order. Well, guess what. My DB and I were basically on the bottom of that 24 standby list.
The weird thing was, when I tried to book seven tickets online just to see if it’d go through, I could. How would I be able to buy tickets for a sold out flight, you ask? That’s called over selling tickets, and this airline was all about over selling as much as they could.
We decided to sit and wait around anyways, since we were already halfway there and had no where to go. They first told us to come back at 8PM and they would let us know if we’d get on the flight or not. We come at 8, and they tell us that we now had to wait until 8:30PM. The last flight back to SFO left at 8PM so if we didn’t get on it, we’d be stuck in New York.
My DB and I kill about six hours at the airport, just waiting. Welllll guess what, they told us that they only had one seat for us and they gave it to the person behind us. Greatttttt.
I looked up hotels in New York and the cheapest one on Hotel Tonight was $299. So not only did we not make the flight to Dublin, I was now out all of the money spent on hotels, shuttles, and tours, and I’d have to sleep at the airport.
We asked about flights for the next day and they told us both flights were oversold with plenty of standbys as well. At this point, we had spent six hours on an airplane and seven hours at the airport. We were not happy campers.
Thank goodness for one of my friends, Phuong, who let us crash at her place in NY so we didn’t have to sleep on the airport floor. We decided that it was best to abandon trying to get to Dublin for the week and work on getting our money back. We hopped back on the first flight to SFO the next morning.
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup good quality cocoa powder
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon espresso powder, optional
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- 2 large eggs
- 3/4 cup milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons vinegar, white or cider
- 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) melted butter or 1/3 cup vegetable oil
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease two standard donut pans or mini donut pans.
- Whisk together the cocoa, flour, sugar, baking powder, espresso powder, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips. Set aside.
- In a large measuring cup or medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla and vinegar. Add the wet ingredients, along with the melted butter or vegetable oil, to the dry ingredients, stirring to blend.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared pan(s), filling them between 3/4 and full.
- Bake the doughnuts for 13-15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove the doughnuts form the oven, and after 30 seconds or so, loosen their edges, turn the pan upside down over a rack, and gently let the doughnuts fall onto the rack.
- For sugar-coated doughnuts, immediately shake the doughnuts in 1 tablespoon granulated sugar; add 1/2 teaspoon cocoa powder to the sugar for an additional touch of chocolate.
- If you want to ice the doughnuts rather than shake them in sugar, allow them to cool completely before icing.
I made these yesterday…yum! Granted, mine were more muffin/cupcakes since I don’t have a donut pan and i didn’t feel like going to the store for vinegar, so i substituted lemon juice. they are super chocolatey and exactly the texture that you expect from a donut. thanks for sharing!