Wintery Afternoon & Homemade Doughnuts

 

 

Yesterday we had a perfect winter day. It snowed. It was COLD. My work was done, well at least nothing was screaming for attention.  We were still enjoying a few leftovers from Christmas night so no major cooking was called for. The boys and Lin were in and out of the house, working, hunting, and cutting wood. Serena was out with her pony 'Lightening' for a while. So I decided to treat them with a few Homemade, made-from-scratch doughnuts. The boys have been reminding me that I used to do this when they were little. I remembered how much fun it was when I was young and my Mom made this treat for us, so I set to work. I kept it at a fairly small batch because I didn't want to have them lurking and they are always best fresh anyway. The recipe I used was from All Recipes. To which I made a few slight changes to fit my preference.

 

 

½ cup warm water

2 Tablespoons instant yeast

1 teaspoon white sugar

¾ cup milk

5½ Tablespoons butter

¼ cup white sugar

1 teaspoon sea salt

2 eggs

4 cups all purpose flour, sifted

 

2 quarts (approx.)

Peanut Oil for frying

 

Glaze:

2 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

warm water or milk

 

Yield: 19 doughnuts and doughnut holes

 

Combine warm water, yeast, and 1 tsp. sugar in a small bowl. Allow to rest for 5 minutes.

 

In a small saucepan combine the milk and butter and heat (medium low heat) until butter is melted. Remove from heat.

 

In a mixer bowl combine the ¼ cup sugar and salt and pour the milk/butter mixture over this. Stir to dissolve the sugar then allow to cool to lukewarm.

 

Add the yeast mixture, eggs, and 1 cup sifted flour and beat until smooth. Gradually add the rest of the flour to form a soft dough.

 

Knead dough several minutes with the dough hook until it no longer sticks to the side of the bowl.

 

Turn onto a floured surface and knead by hand until smooth and elastic.

 

Place dough ball into a greased bowl, grease the top of the ball and cover with a clean cloth and place somewhere warm. (I put it into the oven with the oven light on.) Let rise till double in size, about 1-1½ hrs.

 

Punch down and roll out on a floured surface. About a ½ inch thick. Cut out the size you prefer (I used a clean large can ring) cut a hole out of the center and place on a parchment paper (non stick sprayed) cookie sheet and place back into the oven to rise again. About 40 minutes, or until light and fluffy.

 

Heat oil to 350 degrees and fry each doughnut (a few at a time) until light brown, flipping once.

 

Drain on paper towels.

 

Drizzle with glaze.

 

For the glaze, combine the powdered sugar and vanilla and enough water to make it the right consistency.

 

 

 

As a young girl I always loved the doughnut holes so I fried those too and covered them in powdered sugar.

 

♥Blessings to you!♥