My doughnuts soaked up the oil--other than that little detail they did fry beautifully, light inside crisp outside but totally soaked almost all the way through-- you can literally squeeze a drop of oil out of it. sigh. Listen carefully and you can hear my artery hardening up--hahaha yeah not funny

I've had this refrigerator potato roll dough recipe for like 30 years and I make tea-rings and dinner rolls out of it. But to my surprise I found it listed in a cookbook for doughnuts so I'm good there.--I have a viable recipe. Although I did sub buttermilk for part of the liquid--shouldn't have affected anything though.

Then I decided to use this fryer I bought and never used till this morning. It was a test batch and I have more dough to test with.

The fryer takes almost a gallon of oil. I din have quite enough to make the minimum and used some crisco to make up the difference. So I think that is my culprit the non trans fat crisco?

Plus even though it is heated automatically and I had it on 375--it did not seem to stay hot enough--I'm watching it thinking this ain't sizzling & bubbling enough--not cycling well--so I'm ditching the fryer.

Question--does anyone deep fry in crisco? Part crisco? I hate to ditch all this oil mess but I think I'm gonna try another batch in the same oil mixture in a deep skillet where I can control the heat myself and see if it still soaks up. But in the meantime while the next batch raises--does anyone have any ideas for me?

My dad used to fry with Crisco when I was a kid but that was good ol' old style Crisco. Never had better fried chicken.

My brother and I used to make donuts out of biscuits as kids (we were home alone a lot) and we used Crisco but my dad's deep fryer would be really really hot. They seemed to only take a fraction of a second to fry!

One of my other brothers fries a lot (hunting, camping) with his big turkey-fryer, and he only uses Peanut oil.

Thank you 3G. I had a blend of nice peanut oil and whatever was on sale vegetable oil plus the trans fatless crisco. Yeah I'm gonna get it blazing this time--I'm gonna use my deep dutch oven so I don't burn the freaking house down. I just got the blob of dough out to rest before I cut it so it's gonna be another hour or two.

I'm doing the 'proof' box in the cold oven with some hot water.

I also gotta practice sliding a spatula under the dough to get them in the oil.

I love canned biscuit doughnuts!!!

I'm at 260 degrees so far getting it to the right temp for my next attempt. It won't be long. What if it was the fricken buttermilk? That can't be it!

Hoohah--sweet success--I mean for sure they are fried dough bombs but they are not dripping with fat.

Note to self--yes you should have put vanilla in the dough--

Hey I got some vanilla sugar I can dip them in too though. I made some but I din know what to use it on.

Cinnamon sugar

And I'm gonna experiment with a cooked glaze too--see if it's not to over powering--it dries crisp.

This has reminded me of something in "The Little House on The Prarie books. The Mom was frying doughnuts (was it Alonzo's Mom?) and she didn't have time for newfangled doughnuts that had holes in them --she was making twists that turn themselves over in the fat--you don't have to flip them and the Mom din have time to be flipping new fangled donuts with holes in 'em!!

Yeah!

You know they have those newfangled donuts that are JUST holes, too.

I like plain old cake donuts.

My kids have asked me to make donuts before and I think I will start off with just canned biscuit ones.

I'm gonna try some pumpkin ones too.

<fingers crossed>

I recommend a candy thermometer in a deep wide pan and keep the munchkins far away. I dusted off my fire extinguisher too. Get a box of baking soda handy...

mmmm good!

I just bought a new thermometer the other day.

They really like powdered sugar ones, though one of mine has kinda peculiar tastes and will probably dip his in nacho cheese.

Come to think of it I had/have a nacho cheese boy too.