Homemade Doughnut Recipes

These sweet rings of deep-fried dough make for delightful snacks when you stay up at night to finish reading that gripping Harry Potter installment, and taste equally yum during an afternoon gossip phone session with friends. Almost every country has its own version of doughnuts. There are those that you readily get in the market, but nothing can match the taste that is churned out fresh within the confines of your home.

Given that these doughnuts made at home aren't deep-fried at all, they are a healthier version for all. Make sure that you have

• Flour, 4½ cups
• Potatoes, 1 cup (cooked and mashed)
• Milk, 1 cup (boiled)
• Sugar, ½ cup

• Butter, ¾ cup and ½ cup softened
• Water, ¼ cup (that in which the potatoes have been boiled)
• Yeast cake, 1 (small, weighing 0.6 ounce)
• Eggs, 2 (whisked)
• Salt, 1 tsp

Ensure that the boiled milk is still quite hot, and then add sugar, ¾ cup butter, and salt to it. Blend well and then allow it to stand for some time. Mix the yeast cake into the potato-boiled water, and then pour it into the milk, once it has cooled. Also, add the mashed potatoes to this and then fold in the whisked eggs as well.

Finally, add the flour to this concoction and mix really well. Now, cover the vessel for like 10 - 12 minutes, during which the dough shall raise itself. In the meantime, grease some cookie sheets. Once that's done, roll out the dough into a ½" thick and flat disk.

Now, cut out circular doughnuts from this disk using a doughnut cutter, and then place them on the cookie sheet with 1" gaps in between. Allow them to stand just like that for 10 minutes, and then bake at a high temperature of 425° F for about 20 - 25 minutes.

On removal from the oven, glaze with the softened butter and mizzle sugar granules from the top. Gobble it down when it is still all hot and aromatic from the oven.

These doughnuts will take up less of your time in the kitchen. All you'll need to gather is

• All-purpose flour, 2 cups
• Milk, 1 cup
• Sugar, ½ cup
• Butter, 2 tbsp (molten)
• Baking powder, 1 tbsp
• Cinnamon, ¼ tsp
• Nutmeg, a pinch
• Salt, 1 tsp
• Egg, 1 (whisked)
• Chocolate (molten)
• Cooking oil

Hold a sieve over a large bowl, and run the flour, fine sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt through it. Pour in the milk, molten butter, and whisked egg into the flour mixture, and mix well. Lightly flour your hands to knead this mixture well, and then roll it out into a ½" thick disk.

Now, use a doughnut cutter to cut out individual doughnuts, and then deep-fry them in the cooking oil. When they turn almost golden brown, remove from the oil and place them on tissues to soak away the excess oil. Finally, pour molten chocolate carefully over these doughnuts, and finish off by sprinkling some fine sugar from top.

Now here's another dessert recipe just tailor-made for Halloween! Gather,

• All-purpose flour, 4½ cups
• Milk, 1¼ cup
• Sugar, 1 cup
• Pumpkin, ¾ cup (cooked)
• Egg, 1 (lightly whisked)
• Baking powder, 4 tbsp
• Butter, 2 tbsp (molten)
• Nutmeg, 1 tsp
• Salt, ¾ tsp
• Vanilla extract, ½ tsp
• Cream cheese
• Cooking oil

Strain the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, sugar, and salt into a large bowl. In another vessel, blend together the egg, vanilla extract, butter, milk, and the cooked pumpkin. Now, commingle the two mixtures and then knead really well.

After that, roll this dough out to make a flattened disk about ½" thick, and then cut out individual doughnuts from it, with the help of a flour-dusted doughnut cutter. Deep-fry in odorless cooking oil, and then use cream cheese for icing.

Legend has it that it was a lady called Elizabeth Gregory of Rockport in Maine, who had bid farewell to her son named Hanson with a box of cakes made from dough, as he set sail. She had called these circular cakes 'dough-nuts', but they did not have a central hole at that point. It was only when Hanson pierced one of the cakes into a spoke of the steering helm of the ship, in a bid to keep it somewhere, did he inadvertently make the first doughnut with a hole.