Back when I was a kid, the only place you could get chocolate donuts was in Maine. Harris Bakery in Waterville pretty much defined the epitome of chocolate donuts with a confectioners sugar dusting on top.

Harris is long gone, and now everyplace makes OK chocolate donuts.

But they're just OK.

I volunteered to make brownies for a Thanksgiving dinner (maybe not traditional, but everyone was in favor of the idea). I decided that I didn't want to just make plain old brownies. I've seen stuff about silicone baking pans with fancy molds. And Meijer's even carries these things.

So, next grocery shopping day, I hit the baking good section, and failed to find the silicone things.

I did find baking tins with donut shaped holes for making baked donuts.

The donut tin turned out to be way more than too big for my air fryer, but a trip to Mr. Tablesaw fixed that issue.

I've got my grandmother's recipe for chocolate donuts, but decided I was going to cheat instead. I took a package of brownie mix, added some extra soy-milk and a bit of baking powder.

And it worked. Nice rich chocolate donuts.

I got a couple, then foolishly left them on the counter, out of Caz's reach.

*NOT*!

He was a bit unhappy for a couple days, but survived his chocolate ordeal.

I picked up a silicon mold of tiny gingerbread men. This seemed like a reasonable thing to make brownies in.

This worked. An unexpected byproduct for cooking smaller brownies is that they baked in 1/4 the expected time.

The downside is that brownies are soft and sticky. Getting them out of the mold intact was difficult. There were several invalids that weren't suitable for serving to guests.

So I ate them.