Old Time Cake Donuts

A friend gave me a recipe for Old Time Cake Donuts, and I decided to give them a try a few days ago. This type of donut has always been my favorite vs the raised/glazed type.

I have never made donuts before so this turned into an adventure.

The recipe is quite easy, and no special equipment is needed. My mixed managed the dough without complaint.

Got my ingredients measured out and ready to go. The flour bowl contains the baking powder, salt and spices. Please note, the eggs do need to be at room temp prior to using.

I did start out using the paddle beater to get the butter, sugar and eggs incorporated before changing to the dough hook.

The dough is all ready! This is a very sticky dough, so don’t skip the time in the refrigerator! It lets the flour absorb the liquid and be a bit less sticky when you need to squash it out for cutting.

I’m using one of my smaller cast iron Dutch ovens for the cooking part. I really like cast iron since it heats so quicky and evenly. I added 2 1/2” of generic vegetable oil for the frying part. Watch your temp for this. If it’s too cold your donuts will be greasy when they come out. Too hot and you get them burned or start a lovely fire on your stove.

I was able to fit 6 donuts in for each frying. I used an older pair of chop sticks for the turning and moving around in the oil. They work great for this!

They do fry up quicky, only 3-4 minutes per side to get a nice golden brown color. Make sure you check your oil temp often. I had some fluctuation between batches and needed to let it come back up to temp between them.

If your going to do a cinnamon and sugar coating, shake your donuts in the mix while they are still fairly hot, the sugar sticks better. If you do powder sugar coating, make sure they are completely cold or it gets greasy and gross looking.

Yumm!!!

I got 24 donuts and a bunch of donut holes out of one batch of dough. Some got cinnamon and sugar and some I just left plain.

Observations!

I was not overly fond of the spice mix called for in the recipe. I don’t know if maybe my pumpkin pie spice jar was elderly and losing its flavor, or it was my taste buds, but they do not taste like the ones I grew up with. The ones I remember were more nutmeg tasting. I think when I make them again I'll skip the pumpkin pie spice and just go with cinnamon and nutmeg.

These were great the day I made them. Lovely crisp outer texture and a creamy feeling inner texture. By the next day they lost both of those. They were dryer and did not have that mouth appeal anymore. I did store them in plastic bags overnight. My son thought they were great no matter what.

I don’t think my patting out of the dough technique is very good. I found that some of them came out lovely and some of them seemed to have a blowout from the thicker areas of the cut dough. Trying to use a rolling pin is going to be tough since the dough is really sticky even after the refrigeration. I needed lots of flour on the counter to even get the dough to flatten out at all and not stick to everything in sight.

All in all, they were quite good. I would make these again!

Blessed Be!