Spudnuts: Try making your own fluffy, potato-based doughnuts

There's much excitement in Lethbridge this week over the return of the beloved spudnut, which has been a staple in the city since the mid-1950s.

If you're not in the area, or would like to make your own batch at home, this is a slightly adapted recipe for potato doughnuts that first ran in a 1937 issue of Yankee magazine, in an articletitledAroostook's Hundred Recipes, a collection of dishes from Pearl Ashby Tibbetts of Bethel, Maine.

Spudnuts

It's best to start with dry mashed potatoes. So bakeor microwave the potatoes, then putthem through a potato ricer or gratethem on a box grater the skin will come off as you grate.

Ingredients:

cup butter, softened

cup sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla

-1 cup lightly packed mashed or grated russet or Yukon gold potatoes

cup buttermilk or thin plain yogurt

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

tsp. salt

tsp. freshly grated nutmeg (optional)

canola or vegetable oil, for frying

Cinnamon sugar, for dusting (approximately cup sugar + 2 tsp. cinnamon)

Preparation:

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar for a minute, until it's light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla it should be pale and glossy. Add the potato and buttermilk, and mix until smooth. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg and stir until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough.

On a floured surface, pat the dough out about 3-inch thick and cut into rounds with a doughnut or biscuit cutter. If necessary, cut holes with a smaller cutter, or use a bamboo skewer or chopstick and then stretch the hole out a bit with your finger.

Set a heavy, shallow pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat and add a couple inches of oil.

Heat until hotbut not smoking. If you have a thermometer, it should read 350-375 F (176-190 C).

Working in small batches, cook the doughnuts in the oil, turning as necessary, until puffed and golden brown on both sides, two to four minutes per side.

Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate or sheet, and toss in a shallow bowl of cinnamon sugar while they're still warm.

Serve as soon as possible.

Makes about 1 dozen small spudnuts.

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener.