Nothing Like Homemade Donuts!

The best thing about Homemade Donuts is that they are CHEAP! It comes out to less than a dollar per donut when you make it at home. Also, you can dress them up however you want to and even mix up toppings to make it more fun. 

These are a HIT with kiddie parties!

What you need is:

1 packet active/instant dry yeast

1/5 cup warm water (you might have to increase this if the yeast and water mixture is too thick and clumpy)

3/4 cup warm milk

1/4 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

2.5 tablespoons shortening

2-1/2 cups cake&pastry (or all purpose) flour

1/8 cup cake&pastry (or all purpose) flour (for kneading)

vegetable oil for frying

Dissolve the yeast in the water in a small bowl and wait till it becomes frothy.  

Mix all the ingredients (except for the oil for frying and the 1/8 cup flour for kneading) together and mix on low speed for a couple of minutes. Transfer the dough onto a floured parchment paper and prepare to knead the dough. Use the 1/8 cup flour set aside for kneading to flour the parchment. The dough will be very soft so you will need to flour your hands to be able to handle the dough initially. You don't have to use all of the 1/8 cup of flour. You may use more or less depending on how comfortable you are with the consistency of the dough. At the end the dough should be on the soft side so be wary of how much flour you add while kneading.

Place the dough in a greased bowl and cover it. Leave it aside till dough atleast doubles in size.

Transfer the dough to the floured parchment paper and flatten it down. Use your hands to stretch out the dough to around 1/2 inch thickness. You can use a rolling pin but the dough is so soft that I can manage to do this with my hands. 


Cut out your donuts with a donut cutter or improvise with round shapes lying around the kitchen. Leave the cut out donuts to rise for around 10 minutes. 

While the donuts rise, put some oil in a deep frying skillet and begin heating it up. The temperature should be around 350 F if you're using a fryer. But its usually a hassle changing the oil in the fryer because I use clean oil to fry donuts else they start smelling of the stuff you fried before in the oil. So in order to save oil and the cleaning efforts I take the smallest saucepan I have and put 3/4 cup oil in it to fry the donuts one at a time.

Once the oil is heated up (and you can test it by frying one of the donut centers first) fry the donuts, flipping the sides as they puff up and brown. Drain on paper towels.

For the toppings you can pretty much do whatever you want. You can use melted chocolate and sprinkles, honey, icing sugar, or make your own sugar glaze by cooking some sugar in water and pouring it over the donuts. My son loves the chocolate ones and my husband prefers them plain so I never need to do so much!