Homemade Donuts

A few not-so-lazy Saturday mornings ago, I broke out yet another one of the many, many small appliances that we received as wedding gifts: Cuisinart's mini professional deep fryer. After reading the manual three times because frying oil scares the living daylights out of me (read: grease fire) I decided to venture into the world of home-made donuts. (Yes, I am aware that this is my second post about donuts. For the record, I am totally okay with that because they are delicious.  Everything in moderation, right?)  This was not a random pick out of my mini-fryer cookbook, however.  Making homemade donuts was quite a big deal for my family when I was growing up.  We would all go over to my grandpa's house and gather around in the kitchen while my mom or uncle stationed themselves at the fryer.  My job would always be to sugar the donuts after they were browned to perfection.  Everyone else's job was to eat them as fast as they possibly could.  Check and check.

Heres what you need if you want to try this yourself:

2 rolls of plain- not flaky- Pillsbury Biscuits (the kind that pop when you peel off the paper)

2-3 cups sugar: regular, cinnamon, powdered- whichever!

2 liters of canola oil

a shot glass

a deep fryer

Directions: 
1. Pour the canola oil into your fryer. 

2. Begin heating the fryer to the appropriate temperature in your manual for bread. This is different depending on what kind of fryer you have. Mine was 350. 

3. While you are waiting for it to heat up, lay out 2 large pieces of waxed or parchment paper and fill a bowl with whatever sugar you will be using for the donuts. 

4. Open the Pillsbury rolls and lay them out on one of the pieces of waxed paper.  Use the shot glass to punch holes in the middle of each of the rolls.  This takes some practice because the dough is sticky, but you'll get it.  Put a little cooking spray on the shot glass first if you are having trouble.  Put the holes on one side of the paper and the rings on the other. 

5. Carefully fry each donut or hole 1-2 at a time until each side is golden brown.  This works out to be anywhere from 3-6 minutes on each side. 

6. Enjoy watching the donut holes bob around in the fryer- its so cute!

7. Remove the donut from the fryer, and use a pair of kitchen tongs to carefully place the warm donut in the bowl of sugar.  Flip, and shake off excess sugar. 

8. Place finished donuts on second piece of waxed paper. 

9. Enjoy!

Heres what they look like:

holes and rings

YUM!

Donuts and DIYs,