DOUGHnuts

Breakfast: home made doughnuts

Lunch: YesterDog (local dive that has crazy good chili dogs)

Dinner: Penne Alla Betsy (Pioneer Woman recipe)

Birthday Cake: Triple Chocolate Bundt Cake (will share this recipe someday….hopefully soon)

I thought not bad, I can do this. Only thing is I have never made homemade doughnuts. My mom used to make them all the time. I sat and watched and devoured, but I never actually have done it myself. So I dug out my moms doughnut recipe which is called New England Doughnuts. Why New England? Not sure…cause I am pretty sure non of us ever lived in New England. I think I am just going to call them Doughnuts. Or I could call them Fat Balls, that’s what the local bakery calls my favorite doughnut in their display. I always hate saying”two fat balls please”. But I do it anyway……

You will need these ingredients to make zee doughnuts!

1/4 cup Crisco

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup mashed potatoes (no salt or butter added)

4 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 cup buttermilk or sour milk

approximately 4 cups of grease for frying (Crisco melted or vegetable oil)

Blend the Crisco, sugar, salt, and eggs together well or very good.

I hate to tell you this….you are going to have to haul out your sifter and sift all the dry ingredients together……if you don’t have one, well….umm then just forget I said anything about sifting.

Alternate adding the sifted ingredients and the buttermilk to the sugar mixture. The dough will be very sticky…that’s OK, it will all be glorious…I promise. Just flour your counter…with lots of flour at least 3/4 of a cup.

Now you want to prepare your toppings. I got all crazy and did four. Cinnamon Sugar, Powdered Sugar, Traditional Glaze, and Chocolate Glaze. Printable Glaze Recipes here.

You don’t have to do all this. The Powdered Sugar were the simplest and they were the favorite…well next to the chocolate…I cannot tell a lie. I was trying to make it simple for you.

Now get your oil hot. 375 degrees. Or you can just to the dough ball test=take a pinch of dough plop it in there if it fizzles and floats to the top you are ready to fry your doughnuts, if it does nothing and sinks to the bottom…well then my friend you need to turn up the heat or wait a few more minutes and try the dough ball trick again.

I don’t have a doughnut cutter thing-a-ma-jig. I just have these biscuit cutters, I ended up using the one to the far right. It made the cutest little doughnuts EVER!

Here they are all waiting to get fried….see I tried to make a traditional doughnut up there on the top…but, it was lame.

There they are zee leetle ballz of dough floating around in zee hot greze. I don’t know why I am talking with zee French accent…it just seems like a goood sing to du.

There is the set up. Pan with lots of paper towel for draining. Toppings in the background. then the rack set up for the finished doughnuts. Let the doughnuts drain for a minute, roll them around a bit to get all the access grease off.

WOW, if I may brag……I don’t think anyone would ever have known that this was my first doughnut making experience. The only big flub was the last 8 doughnuts I was not patient enough and they were not done on the inside…bummer.

Thats just part of the mess….the stove top was beyond photographing.

There is the inside. Perfectly, tender and cakey. Very moist! They were just as I remembered as a kid. I was worried they wouldn’t be. I hate that when you have this memory of something and then you go there or you make it and eat it and it’s not at all like you remembered. Not so with these lil pillows of perfection. Delicious…if I may say so myself.

Enjoy!