Homemade Doughnut (holes)

Hey! Natalie and Amanda here.

We got kind of bored today, and we were craving a treat, so we decided to make doughnuts. Which later just became doughnut holes. This is where we got the recipe.It was really delicious and the doughnuts turned out wonderfully!

You will need:

• .25 oz active,dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water 
• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm milk
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 quart vegetable oil for frying

If you choose to make your doughnuts with a glaze, here are the ingredients.

 (We just made ours with powdered sugar which we will explain later.)

• 1/3 cup butter
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 4 tbsp hot water or as needed

Step 1

Weigh/measure the yeast

Step 2

Add it to the warm water, and let stand for 5 minutes, or until it's kind of foamy. We put our mixture outside on the front porch.

Step 3

In a large bow, mix together all the dough ingredients, including the yeast/water mix. Mix at low speed. We had to use a pastry blender to mix all the shortening in.

Step 4

Beat in the remaining flour (3 cups) 1/2 cup at a time, or until the dough no longer sticks to the bowl and is smooth/elastic.

Step 5

Put the dough into a greased bowl, place it somewhere warm, and let it rise. The actual recipe says to let it double in size, but ours wasn't going to ever double, so we just let it sit for 20 minutes, which worked out great.

Step 6

Put the dough on a slightly floured surface and roll out until it is about 1/2 inch in thickness.

Step 7

Cut the shapes of your doughnuts out. The recipe then says to let them double in size again, but Natalie and I didn't do this, and ours turned out great!

Step 8

Heat up the oil in a fryer or heavy skillet up to 350 degrees. Once it's heated up, begin to cook the doughnuts. 

Step 9

Make sure to turn them over so they are evenly brown (we recommend using tongs to turn them). When they're done, use the tongs to take them out, and put them on a plate covered in paper towels. 

Step 10

When the doughnuts are no longer steaming hot, roll them/dust them in powdered sugar if you would like. That's what we did, and they were great! Though we also discovered they were delicious if you put a little bit of peanut butter and raspberry jam on them. Or honey. Or cinnamon sugar. Again, if you just want a simple glaze, the instructions are here.

(this is when we sprinkled the powdered sugar on, it didn't work out too well)

(we recommend rolling it, because the sugar ended up sticking better to the doughnut holes)

And thanks to Khrys Bosland for the cute font used in the previous image!

Enjoy!

-Amanda and Natalie