welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen welcome to Sunday morning and the
old cook book show today we're going to do another recipe out of the five roses
cookbook this is a really great cookbook published in 1915 and the recipe we're
gonna do today is potato donuts now this is a recipe that I've wanted to do for a
while a couple of years ago sitting on the porch with one of my cousins he
started talking about potato donuts and I thought you know I'm gonna make that
recipe and for whatever reason it sort of got pushed to the backburner
I never got to it but all of the research I did at that time led me to
believe that this was a recipe that was first published in the 1930s in New
England sort of Maine and then I was researching through this cookbook and i
came across potato donuts and obviously this cookbook is from 1915 which is
before the 1930s so I doubled down on my research and went really deep and what I
found was that in 1877 the fall of 1877 this recipe was published in probably a
dozen American newspapers across the Midwest now all of those newspapers
published exactly the same recipe exact word-for-word recipe which isn't unusual
not unusual at all this recipe goes way back into the 1870s and if it's showing
up in 1877 in a newspaper obviously it goes back even farther than that and I'd
be interested to find out how far back it goes but it gets a little bit hazy
around that time period because not everything is digitized not everything
is searchable so in this bowl I have potatoes sugar baking powder and I'm
going to add some melted butter and a little bit of vanilla
and about a cup of milk now if anybody out there edits Wikipedia pages you
might want to edit the Wikipedia page to sort of reflect that this recipe wasn't
published for the first time in the 1930s that it goes way back way farther
than that into the 1870s so on the day that I'm shooting this that's what
wikipedia says Wikipedia not always right so in goes the milk there's a
little bit of butter left in the bottom if you set chunks going in that was the
butter that was left in there so I'm gonna give this a mix now a recipe says
mix as usual and then I'm supposed to just put in enough flour to make a soft
dough so there's no measurement for the flour I just need to bring this together
so given the amount of liquid I have here and we start out with a couple of
couples of flour and I'm not really measuring it I'm just kind of scooping
it out I know that I'm probably going to go to at least four four and a half
maybe five cups of flour and once the flour is mixed in I'm just gonna give it
a little bit more and keep mixing judging mixing going back and checking
it out now the 1877 recipe in those newspapers is pretty much exactly the
same proportions as this recipe I'm doing here today except for one
difference like a lot of recipes that were yeasted prior to 1900 after 1900
you start to see them swapping out yeast and instead using baking powder or
baking soda and cream of tartar and this was a common change and someday I'll do
the yeasted version because I'm sure it will have a slightly different texture
than this one but you know pandemic everybody's having trouble with yeast so
I thought I'd just do the baking powder version today okay I think I've got a Jo
that's workable so out onto the surface here I'm gonna put some flour maybe a
little bit more because the dough is kind of tacky and sticky and I'll put it
out and roll it out it says to about a half an inch thick
okay okay we're good so got a doughnut cutter and we'll just cut out some
doughnuts oh that dough's nice
now all it says is to fry in hot grease so I've got some hot grease and only
gonna put in for two time because I don't want to overcrowd the pot and have
the temperature drop too much
now of course as is the way these recipes are written there's no time for
frying you just have to kind of keep an eye on it and you will need to turn them
over at least once so they fry evenly so some of these I'm going to put out and
let them cool on a rack and some of them I'm gonna toss in fine sugar as soon as
they come out of the oil so the sugar sort of coats in at the top okay on to
the cooling rack doc tater donuts spudnuts you spudnuts ever they're
called in the book I know they're called potato donuts okay in the book but Bobby
called them spudnuts and apparently that's the name okay that works for me
so I'm just I want to taste them yes I need no introduction no so they didn't
even say hello sorry hi some of these I left plain some I dipped in sugar some
of the donut holes and some are just the pieces of dough that looks like a little
dog yeah the piece of dough that we left on
the counter animal doughnuts instead of animal cookies oh you ate that one Oh so
I love cake donuts in that old style of old-fashioned donut
yeah the non non risen I also like a really great French cruller mm-hmm
mm-hmm but these are my Donuts of choice like
if there's a box of donuts yeah this is the one I look for jeans are great um
the texture is great are you a bigger one and they stay apparently they stay
fresh longer it says in the book which is pretty much true cuz it's that the
potato brings something to it and they're not super sweet yeah so it's the
sugar on the outside that gives it that extra bit of flavor that in this case
sugar or cinnamon or whatever it is you can dip them in chocolate you can glaze
them you can put colored sprinkles on yeah and mmm this is a donut style
potato donuts that I don't see it a lot of Canadian donut shops no but I spend a
lot of time hanging out in donut shops what does another Canadian of you
I know I know at the times when we when we stopped in at Timmy's on the highway
to get a tea I don't see this style of donut in the in the case and I think
that's a shame because it's a good doughnut I think people would I think
people gravitate towards this so I'm definitely going to have a problem with
this mini with this mess with this baby don't there's one other donut recipe on
that page that I'm really drawn to and that's the molasses donut so I think in
a couple of weeks I'm gonna give that one a go and see how it turns out thanks
for stopping by see you again soon
oh and if you're on Wikipedia please change that Wikipedia page and make it
reflect that the potato donut has a much longer history than 1935 or 36 or
whatever it is again thanks stopping by see you again soon
you