SMF

And here's the results:
Something's still not right - they taste of eggs rather than maize; maybe it was the oil I used. Anyway, a lot closer to the goal. Worth the effort over just soaking in water and deep frying as in the first batch? Not sure.

That's impressive, Chris. They certainly look right.

What kind of oil did you use?

- Murray

I'm not much for deep frying things, but when I made the doughnuts I bought a couple of bottles of canola (rape seed oil to Brits) for the purpose. Three or four batches of doughnuts later, plus a couple of goes at corn nuts, and I'm down to half a bottle of rather dark oil. It wasn't enough, so I topped it up with the remnants of a bottle of avocado oil and some olive oil.

Notes on the frying:
if fried at <370ºF they come out chewy
if fried at >400ºF they can pop like pop corn and make a mess, splashing oil everywhere
don't put more than a large spoonful in at once or the pan will foam up and make a hell of a mess.
doing this outdoors would be better
even if sprinkled separately in the pan, they aggregate by surface tension and stick together a single mass (easier to remove)

I think I'll compare with coffee-flavoured popcorn, which is an awful lot less effort!