doughnut

Yesterday it snowed (though a rather disappointing amount), and Mom decided to make snow day doughnuts with us! She and her sisters used to make them on snow days with their mom when they were girls.

It was a lot of fun to do, and it wasn’t actually that hard – just time consuming. Make sure you plan ahead before making doughnuts because it takes most of the day to let the dough rise the two or three times required.

After mixing up the dough, Mom rolled it out fairly thick.

Since we, ahem, didn’t actually have a doughnut cutter (which my mom noticed a little too late XD ) we used a round measuring cup for cutting out the doughnut and a bottle cap for cutting out the hole. It actually worked quite well!

We put the cut out doughnuts on an extra table board which was big enough to hold them all but still portable.

DSC_0986 (1280x853) — Don’t worry, we made more than this. 😉

We didn’t forget the doughnut holes!

Next we needed to fry them – the fun part! Make sure to slip the doughnuts into the hot oil very, very carefully to avoid getting splattered: don’t plop them in! Watch the middles of the doughnuts and flip them over every so often to see if they’re getting browned. You have to be quick because once they’re done, they’re all done at once.

This is what an unglazed doughnut looks like. Pretty tempting, huh?

But take a look at these! YUMMY! Let the doughnuts cool and drain on some paper towels for just a bit, then take a knife and fork and coat them in a delicious glaze.

DSC_1004 (1280x853) — Yikes, this isn’t the best picture ever, but oh well. 😛

Never forget the poor yummy doughnut holes!

Let them dry on a metal rack, like we did, or hang them from a wooden dowel, and then DIG IN! Ohhh they taste so good! This recipe made about 50 doughnuts for us, so we froze the extras in Ziploc bags to have for Sunday morning breakfasts. Mmmmm!

Okay, are you ready for the recipe now? The doughnut recipe was handed down from my Grandma and the glaze recipe is from Mennonite Country-Style Recipes & Kitchen Secrets (but we always call it Esther Shank’s). Mom and Dad grew up Mennonite, so we use this cookbook a lot! It has a lot of great, classic recipes as well as some more unusual ones, and it also has plenty of tips and tricks for cooking your best. If you’d like to see the Amazon listing, click here.

(*Sigh* Since I’m not a food blogger, I therefore don’t have the fancy “Print this Recipe” button. 😦 XD )

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Doughnut Recipe:

1 c. Crisco, butter or other shortening
4 c. milk
1 c. sugar
4 packages of dry yeast (4 tablespoons)
4 eggs
4 tsp. salt
14 c. flour (add to desired consistency)

Heat milk. Dissolve yeast in warm water and mix into warmed milk. Add 3 cups of flour to mixture and beat until smooth. Set back and let rise about 2 hours.

Cream butter, sugar, and salt, then add eggs. Add to yeast mixture. Stir in the rest of the flour and let rise until dough doubles in size.

Roll out the dough, cut, and let rise again. Fry in fat or oil at 375 degrees. Glaze (see below).

Glaze Recipe:

1 lb. powdered sugar (3 1/2 cups)
6-8 tbsp. boiling water
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix until smooth. Pour into small, deep bowl and dip the fried doughnuts with a fork and knife. They should be well covered with a thin coat of glaze.

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And there you have it! The perfect snack to go with your snow day. (Or any day, actually.)

Do you like doughnuts? (Hint: the answer is yes.) Have you ever made doughnuts before?

I hope you enjoyed this post, and thanks for reading!

***Allison***

P. S. True, it was a disappointing amount of snow, but I actually got quite a few fun snow/ice pictures, if I do say so myself. 😀 Stay tuned!

As you might already know, I l♥ve making things out of polymer clay. I especially like making miniatures, whether it be a little snowy owlet or miniature doughnuts like I’m going to show you today! (The links will take you to my Etsy shop listings.) I’m also going to give you a tour of my clay “studio” that I share with my sister.

First, the doughnuts. The basic doughnut is super simple to make, and then, of course, you get to embellish it – yay! 🙂

Mix it. Unless you already have the perfect doughnut colored clay, you’re going to need to mix up a batch of doughnut batter. I think I used white, dark brown, light brown, orange, and red clay for my mix.
Cut it. If you are making more than one doughnut, you’ll want them all to be the same size. I first rolled my “batter” through a pasta machine on the thickest setting, then folded that sheet in half to make it even thicker. I used a mini-Sharpie lid to cut circles out of the dough. Don’t worry about making the circles pretty – we’ll work on that in the next step.
Shape it. This step is easy. Roll the circles into smooth balls and press down lightly with your finger to make nice rounded cakes.
Hole it. I cut a hole in the middle of my doughnuts with a straw, although if your doughnuts are a different size, you may need to use something else. Make sure the hole is in the middle, or the doughnut will look lopsided… kind of like the doughnut below. 😀
Decorate it! Yay, the fun part! You can add glaze, sprinkles, chocolate covered sardines, whatever you want. (Although if you offered me the last kind, I think I would pass. XD) Here some of the 36 doughnuts that I made. Yes I made every single sprinkle on those doughnuts by hand. And yes, it took a while. I glazed some most of the icing with a gloss glaze that makes it look much more realistic. XD Go here to see my Etsy listing of these doughnuts with a picture of each flavor.

And now the clay studio! I set up a table in our school room, covered part of it with tinfoil, and arranged all of our clay stuff neatly on top. It’s really nice to have a designated place to work with clay. (Click here to see my sister’s version of this tour.) The anatomy of a clay table: