Cinnamon Sugar "Doughnut" Holes

Like a ROCK! Ooohhh, like a rock.

These were supposed to be Scrumptious Cinnamon Breakfast Bites (aka doughnut holes), and I don't know what went wrong, but something did go wrong. The pictures from the original post at Oh My! Sugar High looked appetizing, and I didn't deliberately change anything in the recipe, so I don't know what the issue was. I'm willing to lay the blame on myself, because who knows what happened in this morass of baking failure.

The sacrificial lambs

Ingredients:
1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup crisp rice cereal, coarsely crushed
2 tablespoons plus 1/2 cup sugar, divided
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter-flavored shortening
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup butter, melted

Steps:

Mix the flour, cereal, 2 tblsp sugar, baking powder and salt. It's a lot of flour. I double-checked my measurements a million times to make sure it wasn't supposed to be 1/3 cup flour or something.

Cut in the shortening until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs, then stir in the milk. I bought a pack of shortening just for this recipe, and look what it got me. A bunch of unused shortening sitting in a cabinet and inedible doughnut holes.

Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Mix the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl and drop each ball first into the melted butter and then into the cinnamon sugar combo. Do not try to be smart and mix the cinnamon and sugar with the butter so that you can skip a dunking step. You will end up feeling very, very stupid, and you'll waste 1/4 cup of butter.

Bad idea, executed poorly.

When it comes time to bake, you have a couple of options to not do. You could pile them all into a greased 8-9 inch pan as in the linked example, or put them on a cookie sheet as the linkee suggested. I went with the cookie sheet, or whatever it is this thing is called, and baked those suckers at 425 F for about 15 minutes

As I might have mentioned, they turned out horrible. The taste consisted of floury flour with a hint of shortening, and the texture was, as also previously mentioned, rock-like. I kept them in the fridge for weeks, feeling guilty and choking one down every few days, before I gave up and threw them out.

Don't do it. Save yourself.

* I made these on Oct. 31 of last year. Don't expect miracles of timely reporting from me.