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Nothing like having doughnuts ‘around’

DELIGHTFUL DOUGHNUTS — Doughnuts are a popular autumn treat, especially when decorated in orange frosting with chocolate or black sprinkles or any spooky-looking Halloween character. There are yeast-raised, cake, round with a hole in the middle, just the holes, spherical and rectangle shaped, filled with cream frosting or jelly or plain with cinnamon and granulated sugar. Anyway you look at the taste-tempters, they are just plain good. -- Esther McCoy

What is simply scrumptious with a glass of apple cider, a cup of coffee or hot chocolate? During this Halloween time, the guess would be a large, slightly warm, if possible, doughnut. Your choice of shape, filled or unfilled, frosted or dipped in sugar and cinnamon. All rate so high on the taste barometer that they could be riding through the night on a broomstick.

I know some are saying that the word for the dessert is spelled wrong here, but in looking in the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary and on Google, the correct spelling is D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T. It was possibly shortened by a bakery or doughnut shop somewhere down the line to donut.

No matter how the spelling goes, I have some recipes here that should make up some tasty sweetened, fried dough.

This one is from my trusty Betty Crocker Cookbook that looks as if it were dragged through a raspberry bush backwards. It’s simply called raised doughnuts.

Raised Doughnuts

1 cup lukewarm milk

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 envelope dry yeast granules or 1 cake compressed yeast

1 egg

1/4 cup soft shortening

3 1/2 to 3 3/4 cups flour

Mix together milk, sugar, salt and nutmeg. Add yeast, crumpled if in cake form and stir until dissolved. Mix in egg, soft shortening and add to the milk mixture. Add flour in two additions, using the amount necessary to make it easy to handle. For excellent eating and keeping quality, keep dough as soft as possible, almost sticky, just so you are able to handle it.

Knead until smooth and elastic. Let rise in a warm place. After second rising, round up the dough, cover and let it rest for 15 minutes so the dough is easy to handle. Roll out dough 1/3-inch thick and cut with a floured 3-inch doughnut cutter. Let rise on the board until very light. Leave uncovered so a crust will form on the dough. Drop into deep hot fat, 375 degrees. When golden brown on one side, turn with a long two-pronged fork and complete the other side. Drain on absorbent paper. Makes 1 1/2 to 2 dozen doughnuts.

Note: To make jelly-filled doughnuts. Roll out dough 1/2-inch thick. Cut with a 3-inch cookie cutter, but do not use the hole cutter. Fry as for raised doughnut. When cool, cut a short slit in the side of each one through to the center. Thrust in a teaspoon of jelly, vanilla pudding or whipped cream frosting. Close tightly and roll in sugar.

Note again: To glaze doughnuts, add 1/3 cup boiling water gradually to 1 cup confectioners’ sugar and 1/8 teaspoon vanilla. Mix well. Dip warm doughnuts into the warm glaze. Place on a wire rack and let them drip and harden.

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My mother made a Czechoslovakian doughnut and in that language it is called a “sisky.” The doughnut was a lighter dough than plain doughnuts, made with  sweet cream and lots of egg yolks. Czechoslovakian cooks always used sweet cream in baking and cooking and was it ever yummy.

Sisky (Marshmallow creme-filled raised doughnuts like my grandmother

and mom made)

3 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon salt

2 1/4 cups flour

5 egg yolks

1 cup sweet cream

1 cups lukewarm milk

3 tablespoons sugar

1 cake yeast or 1 envelope dried yeast

Crumble yeast in 1/2 cup of the lukewarm milk. Let stand for several minutes. Add 3/4 cup flour. Mix and let rise for a half hour. Rewarm remaining milk and add the butter. Beat egg yolks and add to milk mixture with the remaining flour, sugar and salt. Knead with enough extra flour to make a dough that is still almost sticky but easy to handle. Let rise until one and a half its original size. Roll out to 1/2-inch thick with a floured cookie cutter, without the hole in the center. Let the cutouts rise again, uncovered, for more than a half hour. Fry in hot oil, turning until both sides are golden. Cool and split, putting a spoonful of marshmallow creme inside, and re-cover with the top. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.

Note: These can be rolled out thinner than the original ones and place a spoonful of jelly or jam on top of a rolled-out circle. Add the top and crimp the edges tightly and put in hot oil. Or the jelly can be put in after frying, as with the marshmallow creme.

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Woman’s Day magazine reports that since the middle of the 20th century, doughnut recipes have called on potatoes to create a soft springy texture.

The magazine’s 1971 version called for boxed instant mashed potatoes, as leftover mashed potatoes could be absent from your refrigerator at the time. The instant mashed potatoes were first used as rations during World War II, and then dehydrated potatoes became a household staple in the 1960s,  during the rise of convenience foods. Actually, the potato doughnuts craze swept the nation in the 1940s, after two brothers started “Spudnut,” a chain devoted to the potato pastries. Here is a recipe from the 1971 archives of Woman’s Day magazine.

Potato Doughnuts

For the doughnut dough:

4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for the rolling surface

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 large oranges

1/4 cup whole milk

1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

2/3 cup instant mashed potato flakes

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Oil for frying

Flour for the surface

For sugar coating:

1 cup sugar

Zest of an orange, about 1 tablespoon

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Finely zest the oranges — you will get about 2 tablespoons — and set aside. Then squeeze the juice to get 3/4 cup, add water if it does not measure up.

In a small saucepan, bring the orange juice to a boil and remove from heat. Add the milk and butter and stir until the butter melts. Add potato flakes and stir until combined and thickened. Transfer the mixture to the large bowl of an electric mixer.  On low speed, beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the sugar, orange zest and vanilla. Mix to combine. Gradually add the flour mixture, mixing until just combined Cover and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to fry, make the sugar coating. In a medium bowl, combine the sugar and zest. In a large deep saucepan, heat 3 to 4 inches of oil to 360 degrees, maintaining a range of between 340 and 360 degrees at all times. Meanwhile, place half the dough on a floured surface and turn to coat the dough with the flour. Gently pat the dough flat so it is 1/2-inch thick and use a floured 3-inch round cutter to cut out doughnuts. Punch out holes, using a 1-inch cutter. Reserve the holes. Use the smaller cutter to cut additional holes from the scraps.

In batches of three to four large doughnuts, fry until a deep golden brown, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes per side. Transfer to a baking rack. While doughnuts are still warm, coat them one at a time in the sugar mixture. Fry the doughnut holes and and leftover dough configurations until golden brown and coat with sugar mixture. Betty Crocker called these mis-shapes frogs. You also can wait until they are cool and coat with powdered sugar.

(McCoy can be contacted at emccoy@heraldstaronline.com.)

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