Homemade Doughnuts Recipe (Italian Graffe) – Laura Vitale

Ingredients

•     1 ¾ cups of All Purpose Flour
•     1 ½ cups of Potatoes, cooked until very soft, peeled and mashed
•     1 Egg
•     2 Tbsp of Unsalted Butter, softened at room temperature
•     ¼ cup of Granulated Sugar
•     2 tsp of Dry Yeast
•     ¼ cup of Milk, slightly warm
•     Zest of One Small Lemon or Half of a Large Lemon
•     ½ tsp of Salt
•     2 Tbsp of Limoncello (optional)
•     1 tsp of Vanilla Extract (optional)
•     Lots of Vegetable oil or Canola oil for frying
•     About 2 Cups of Granulated Sugar, to coat the doughnuts

Preparation

1) In a small bowl, mix together the yeast and milk and set aside for a couple minutes.

    2) In a large bowl, mix together the flour, cooked potatoes, egg, sugar, butter, lemon zest, limoncello, vanilla, salt and the milk and yeast mixture.

    3) Mix everything together until it forms into a dough (it will be sticky at this point) then dump it onto a well floured board and kneed it until the dough comes together and its nice and smooth and no longer sticky (this might cause you to use a bit more flour than you might expect so keep some on hand)

    4) Once your dough is ready, take a large baking sheet and line it with a lint free kitchen towel, and sprinkle the towel lightly with flour, set aside.

    5) Cut little pieces (the size you cut depends on how big you want the doughnuts to be, I make them small so I cut little pieces ) off the dough and roll them out into a rope, then pinch the ends together to form a circle, place the doughnuts onto the kitchen towel lined baking sheet. Continue forming the rest and once your all done, cover them with another kitchen towel and allow them to rise in a warm spot for about an hour or until they have doubled in volume.

    6) Heat the vegetable oil in a large pot until it reaches 350 degrees, drop about 4 doughnuts at a time and let them cook for a couple minutes, they should take about a minute per side or until both sides are golden brown. Drain on a paper towel lined plate.

    7) Dip them into the sugar and place on a platter. Best when they are hot so dig in!