Doughnuts

How about some strawberry, cheese, sugar crusted and chocolate coated doughnuts for this Christmas? Easy doughnuts that can be made in no time, don't have to wait for the dough to rise up. Knead it, roll it, cut out and fry it. Top it with your favourite flavours and there you go!

While browsing through the net I happened to find this recipe,and one interesting ingredient that caught my attention was the usage of mashed potatoes here.So decided to give it a try, and the outcome was not at all bad. Kids relished it,and as for me, I felt the yeast could be reduced a bit, but otherwise it was a quick doughnut that could be made in no time with very few ingredients.
 With the onset of the Christmas holidays, the kids are at home, bored with all the TV,games, gadgets etc. So the topping on the doughnuts was done by them, totally as per their ideas. Some were drizzled with some strawberry syrup, some with cheese, some with chocolate, some with nutella etc. They had a great time decorating their doughnuts and munching them off. 

Recipe adapted from secretdonutrecipe.com
Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 potato
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 teaspoon yeast
1 cup milk
2 tablespoon vegetable oil + more for deep frying

Method

• Prick the potato with a fork and microwave it for 5 minutes. Peel and mash the potato and keep it aside.(You can boil the potato and mash it too. That is up to you.)
• In 1 cup of warm milk add the yeast and a pinch of sugar and keep this aside.(the milk should just be warm, not hot, or else it will kill the yeast).
• In a bowl, mix together, the flour, sugar, mashed potato and sugar.
• Now add the wet ingredients i.e the milk with yeast and 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.
• Mix everything with a fork until it starts to ball up. Add more flour as it will be sticky and knead into a soft dough.
• Dust some flour on the kitchen counter top and knead the dough.

• Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough into 1/2 inch thickness.

• Using a doughnut cutter and any other suitable round edged cutter(or even a glass), cut out rounds. Cut out small rounds from the center to make a doughnut shape.(if you are not using a doughnut cutter).You can fry these small rounds that are cut off from the center and serve them as munchkins!

• Heat enough oil for deep frying.
• Fry the doughnuts in the hot oil, turning around until both sides are golden brown. Drain onto a paper towel.
• Sprinkle sugar on the warm doughnuts and serve or give them to the kids and let them do their innovative toppings.