Mum’s Potato Donuts
We were a family of 12 children, plus other relatives who were farmed out when they came over after the war. Mum was always baking and preparing food to feed the hungry mouths.
Quite often when we came home from school, starving after an hour-long bus ride and sometime a half-hour hike down the road, we would find Mum in the kitchen leaning over the wood stove making donuts in lard she had rendered from some pork we had raised. We loved to dip those warm donuts in sugar along with a tall glass of cold milk. Tim Horton’s doesn’t even come close.
Ingredients:
2 cups hot mashed potatoes
2 cups sweet milk
2 cups white sugar
2 tbsps. butter
5 tsps. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla,
flour to make a soft dough, about 5 cups full.
Method:
Mix potatoes, sugar, butter, milk, and vanilla and stir in flour and baking powder.
Roll out 3/4 inch thick and cut into small rounds or use a donut maker. We used to cut out the rounds with a glass and cut the holes in with a thimble.
Set the donuts on floured cloths whilst you drop those lovely donuts into hot shortening (375 ‘F) until they are golden brown on one side and then turn them over (we used metal knitting needles) to brown the other side
Take out and drain on newspaper or paper towel, dip in sugar and dream while you look out the window.
Ellen Lewers @ mrslewersfarmhouse@shaw.ca