Homemade Potato Donuts

I wanted to share a recipe today that we tried out recently.  Someone we know shared it with us, thank you Diane!  The homemade potato donuts were very fun and easy to make.  Mr. Wonderful really wanted to try these out.  He has a memory of going to a friend’s house when he was a kid, and the friend’s mom had made homemade donuts.  Being a kid, he thought that was the coolest thing!  Since it was a fond memory, he wanted to try to replicate for our boys.

They turned out great!  They were very moist and I think they tasted like Fall.    I am sure the nutmeg has something to do with that.  The recipe makes 60 donuts, although we were doubting this when we saw the amount of dough there was.  We ended up with 59 donuts, but had also made a couple donut holes as well.  Because it made so many, we ended up freezing some of the donuts.

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We used this donut cutter to cut out our donuts.  It can also double as a cookie cutter.

We used our fryer to make these.  I don’t like to use that in the house, otherwise you are smelling that fryer smell all day.  So we fried our donuts in the garage.  As a result, several neighbors got to try the donuts as well.  

I hope you try these donuts and enjoy them as much as we did!

Homemade Potato Donuts

Yield: 60 donuts

Prep Time: 1 hour

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

These delicious homemade potato donuts are easy and fun to make! This recipe is perfect for fall or anytime of the year.

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Ingredients

• 1½ cups mashed potatoes (white russet potatoes work well)
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• ⅓ cup melted butter
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 6 cups flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons nutmeg
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 3-4 lbs lard

Instructions

1. Boil enough potatoes for 1½ cups, drain and mash, keep warm.
2. Beat together eggs, sugar, vanilla and mashed potatoes.
3. Add melted butter.
4. In a separate bowl combine and mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg).
5. Alternate stirring in flour and buttermilk until all is combined. The last bit of flour added thickens the mixture substantially.
6. Dough is made the night before, put in a covered container and refrigerated. (Keep refrigerated time to 24 hours or less).
7. The next day heat lard while you are rolling out donuts. We use an electric fryer with the temp turned to high (375°C).
8. Flour the counter to press out the dough. After refrigeration the dough may be slightly brown from the potatoes.
9. Use 1/3 of the dough at a time. Rub flour on the outside of the ball then press dough out to ⅜” (between ¼ and ½ inch) with your hands.
10. Dip the cutter in flour each time when cutting a donut.
11. Gently pick them up and ease into the hot lard.
12. Put no more than four donuts in at a time otherwise it decreases the temperature of the oil and will increase cook time and the donut will absorb more lard.
13. Cook for one minute then flip and cook for another 50 seconds (times may vary for your fryer, test it out).
14. Immediately after frying, you can shake in a container with a lid fill with sugar if desired.
15. Once fried lay on brown wrapping paper or paper bags from the grocery store.

Notes

Tips:
Consider making mashed potatoes for supper and add the 1½ cups potatoes needed into your preparation
You can freeze the lard for future use.
Using a rolling pin makes dough stick to the counter (this stuff is sticky). Just use your hands to push out the dough.
When fried the donut will be fat if the dough is too thick, and if too thin the donut will soak up more oil and be 'sunk in'.
Freeze remaining donuts in ice cream pails. When you take them out they will retain that nice crunchy outside and taste.