Homemade Yeast Donuts

Well, it's been a few months since I've posted hasn't it? But, with the arrival of baby number 3 a couple of weeks ago I decided I need to start doing something I enjoy to help save my sanity, even if that something is still at home with 3 kids begging for my attention. So, hopefully I'll start cooking and baking and trying new recipes again. I hope that means I start posting more here too.

I actually made these donuts a long time ago, sort of. Back in November when little boy was celebrating his 4th birthday I was suffering from pregnancy insomnia. I was wide awake at 5 AM and decided I should do something to make little boy's birthday more special. I knew he liked donuts and I knew hubby had a donut recipe from his grandma. I had heard really good things about this recipe, so I decided to give it a  try. Now, I dont have a donut cutter so I just used a round cookie cutter to cut out myt donuts and a really small diamond shaped cookie cutter to make my donuts. My donuts ended up being smaller than donuts from a bakery. It turns out this recipe makes a lot of donuts, like twice as many as my family needs at once. So after I cut out all of my donuts I put half of the donuts on some parchment paperand decided to try and freeze them. I fried up the other half that day and they were yummy. Well fast forwad to this weekend, I finally took the remaining donuts out of the freezer and to my delight they freeze really well. I took them out of the freezer friday night and let them thaw in the fridge. I pulled them out Saturday morning, let them rise a bit, then fried them and they were fantastic. You just have to forgive me for using an instagram photo. It didn't occur to me to share this recipe on my blog until after I shared the instragram photo with my friends and a few people asked me for the recipe. At that point we had already eaten the donuts, so I couldn't get better pictures.

Oh, and as for the frosting, I just warmed up some canned frosting and dipped the donuts in it.

Doughnuts 

• 2 C. warm water
• 3 T. yeast
• 1/2 C. sugar
• 1/2 C. shortening
• 1/2 C. dry instant potato flakes
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 t. salt
• 1 t. nutmeg (optional)
• 1 t. lemon extract (optional)
• 5 1/2 - 6 C. flour

Mix and knead to make a soft dough.  Let rise once.  Roll out dough and cut out doughnuts. Let rise again. Fry in hot oil until golden brown, flipping over once. (375F)  Drain and glaze. 

Uncooked donuts freeze well. Let thaw in fridge over night and then let rise in warm place before frying.

Note: the temperature of the oil is important. If the oil isn't hot enough they will cook too slowly and soak up too much oil.