Mom's donut recipe

When I was growing up, most of the Halloween treats we got when we were out trick-or-treating were homemade but my favorite treats were those from a store.  I really hope that my disappointment didn't register on my face as those kind adults of my youth put homemade goodies in my trick-or-treat bag. The cookies would always get smashed in the bag, or the candy or popcorn balls would stick to everything or get smashed up before I could get home to eat them.  We didn't receive candy from the store all the time like kids do today.  My brother, sister and I could just make candy disappear! Today, my kids are indifferent to most candy and it is a family joke when they can produce bags of candy from Easter, Halloween and Christmas well into the following year.

So when Mom told me she was going to try making donuts for Halloween treats, I wasn't enthusiastic and, really, for years was always kind of amazed at what a huge positive response the donuts brought. I mean, they were delicious, but they were homemade! 

In retrospect, I think what was happening was that the world as I knew it was moving away from not only homemade trick-or-treats but pretty much homemade anything, so it came to be a very unique thing to get homemade treats at Halloween and maybe even more unique to get homemade donuts.  

Also what is normal and everyday we often take for granted.  Years ago, in Martha Stewart's magazine, she wrote that her father's favorite cookie was some kind of cookie that had to be purchased at the store.  What person in his right mind would prefer something someone other than Martha and her mother would make, one might ask!  We value what is most rare, I suppose, rather than what is common--until that common thing is gone and then we wish we had it and realize we took it for granted.

I think my mother excelled at making breads, not just loaves of bread but rolls, pancakes, cinnamon rolls, and as an extension, donuts.  In fact, I have never tasted homemade bread better than my mother's, ever.  She made many things that were very good but my favorites were her bread items.

Mom started this donut tradition after I had moved from home or as I was nearly out of high school, and kept it up for probably twenty years.  It pained her very greatly when she could no longer produce these treats.  She felt like she was letting her public down.  What we didn't know then was that it wasn't physically too difficult, it was becoming mentally too difficult.  She just could no longer pull it off.  

Because I was not here very often for Halloween, I do not necessarily associate Halloween with donuts, except that now that I'm back home, at Halloween everyone reminds me of the donuts.  I think I will have to at least try out this recipe to "recapture" something my mother used to do.

My sister lived close enough to stop by every Halloween with her oldest two children and they had a tradition of eating Mom's delicious donuts.  My sister always feels that it can't be Halloween without having at least one donut to eat! 

For years, people have asked for Mom's donut recipe and she was always glad to share it.  The recipe comes from the old ward cookbook and it was Amelia Squire's recipe.

Doughnuts or Spudnuts

2 cups scalded milk

2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 yeast cakes

1/4 cup warm water

1/2 cup shortening or salad oil

5 or 6 cups flour

Combine yeast cakes in warm water.  Then combine with shortening or salad oil and flour.  Let milk cool until warm; add ingredients in their order and knead until well mixed.  

Let raise, mix down, then roll and cut with cutter.  

My mother always cut out the donuts without the holes and then just poked her finger through to make a hole before dropping the donut in the grease. 

 Let raise about 1/2 inch and fry in salad oil.  Drop into icing while hot and drain.  

*For spudnuts, add thick potato water.  (I don't recall Mom ever calling them spudnuts but a friend of Mom's said Mom would sometimes add 1/8 to 1/4 cup of potato flakes or 1/2 cup mashed potatoes or the thick potato water to make spudnuts.)

*This makes about 35-40 donuts.

*I don't know Mom's recipe for glaze but I believe it was the following:

Glaze 

(Helen DeMille's recipe in that same cookbook)

1 cup water

1 tsp vanilla

2 packages powdered sugar

pinch of salt 

Guten Appetit!