For those of you who haven’t heard, today is National Donut Day in the U.S. To celebrate, I’ve found two donut/doughnut recipes for you in the Kirschner Collection. For the record, it would be totally fine to bring batches of these to the library, even if it’s not on Donut Day.

Viennese Carnival Doughnuts (faschingskrapfen)

Ingredients

5 lbs. pastry flour
3 2/3 ozs. yeast
1 quart milk
12 ozs. sugar
12 ozs. butter
12 egg yolks
1/2 pint rum
1/2 oz. salt
vanilla
2 lemon rinds, grated

Instructions

Dissolve yeast in a little warm milk, add one-third of the flour to form yeast sponge. Let rise well. Cream sugar, butter, yolks, flavoring, and salt in top of double boiler until fluffy and luke warm. Add sponge and rest of flour plus any remaining milk. Knead well to get a soft, silky dough. Divide dough into small pieces of one ounce each and roll into smooth balls. Cover a board with cloth, dust with flour and place balls on it. Cover with cloth and let rise in warm place until double in size. Meanwhile, heat the fat according to temperatures suggested in the chart [pg. 123]. To make it easier to remove doughnuts after frying, a wire screen should be put on the bottom of the pan. If a screen is not available, fry only a few at a time. Lay doughnuts into the fat upside down. As soon as the lower part has browned, turn over. Properly fried doughnuts will show a white ring around the center.
To fill doughnuts, form a tube of waxed paper. Fill with apricot jam, cut off the point with scissors. Stick tube sideways into the doughnut and squeeze. Special filling devices are on the market for use by professionals and are certainly very practical.

Notes

Image: “baked doughnuts” CC BY-NC by wenday 😀

By The Pastry Chef (1965) by Bert. J. Phillips

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Raised Honey Donuts

Ingredients

2 1/2 packages active dry yeast or one 1 1/2 ounce cake
1/2 cup honey
1 tablespoon salt
2 large eggs
6 tablespoons butter, melted
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups milk, heated to 110°F.
5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour
Vegetable oil for deep frying
Granulated sugar

Instructions

Dissolve the yeast, honey, salt, eggs, butter, and vanilla in the milk. Add the flour gradually, while kneading the mixture. Don’t use all the flour unless the dough is very sticky. After kneading for 10 minutes, the dough should be smooth, elastic, and still sticking slightly to your hands. Dust lightly with flour and cover. Let ruse at room temperature for about 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in bulk.
Roll the dough out until about 1/2 inch thick then cut out doughnut shapes. Place shapes on a greased baking sheet and let rise at room temperature for 35 to 40 minutes, or until doubled in bulk.
Heat the oil in a deep-frying pot until between 365° and 375°F. Drop about 4 or 5 of the doughnuts in at a time, and fry for about 20 seconds on each side, or until golden brown. Let drain on paper towels, then sprinkle with granulated sugar and serve hot.

By The Joy of Pastry (1985) by David Munn