Bagels and Doughnuts Take 1

Last weekend I made my first attempt at making bagels and doughnuts from scratch. It was a bit ambitious of me to try them both at once, this was proven when I dropped my bagel dough as I removed it from the fridge and shattered the bowl. I quickly cleaned up and chopped off all the edges of the dough so I had a nice clean middle.

Everything turned out alright for a first go but the bagels were flat, the water was too hot and I added too much salt so I killed the yeast which meant they didn't rise. They tasted deliciously but they were very small, about palm size. I'm going to give it another go this weekend to see if I can get them right this time.

The doughnuts will take a bit more tweaking to get right. The doughnuts themselves didn't have enough flavor. I tried to make them adult so instead of a normal chocolate icing I did a Kahlua-chocolate icing, it turned out too runny and sticky. I'm not entirely sure how to fix this so if anyone has a suggestion I'd appreciate it.