Sharing our Waldorf Enrichment Day

Today we enjoyed donut making instead of the traditional bread to start off our week. The kids response? "Hey! Why didn't we do this yesterday and all those other days too?"

I enjoy making homemade donuts because we use olive oil in the dough instead of lard and whole wheat flour and all organic ingredients. We use canola oil for frying, which is not ideal but it is better than corn oil or who-knows-what oils they use in the shops! The kids love them and they are the only donuts I can eat without feeling ill :)

I probably already shared this recipe with you but this is my mom's old recipe that we used to make as kids...at that time we used a glass for the donut and a plastic curler to cut out the middle of the donut :)

Before we made donuts we told the story about Red Riding Hood bringing donuts to her grandma and about the little girl and her basket going to the market to sell donuts (another version of “Little Girl and the Milk Pail”)


Grandma’s Donuts (Recipe used in my family since 1934 or earlier)

1 TBS. Yeast
¼ cup water

¾ cup milk, scalded
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup organic pure dried cane juice (cane sugar)
1 tsp. Salt
1 egg
3 ½ - 3 ¾ cup flours (I use WW and a touch of white or other)

You can put all this in the bread machine – wet ingredients first, dry next and yeast last and press “make dough only” OR you can do the following:

Soften the yeast in the warm water
Combine milk, shortening, sugar and salt. Cool to lukewarm
Add one cup of the flour and beat well
Add softened yeast and egg. Mix well.
Add enough of the remaining flour to make a soft dough
Turn out on a lightly floured surface and kneed until smooth and satiny.
Place in a greased bowl and let rise of 1 ¼ hours or until double.
Punch down and let rise again until double.
Roll out the dough 1/3 inch thick (we did this in class)
Cut the dough into shapes and cut a hole in the middle (we did this in class)
Let rise about 30-40 minutes (we skipped this step in class, but if we did it the donuts would be more light and fluffy).
Fry in deep fry oil until slightly browned (375 degrees). Drain on paper towels.
While they are warm frost them with a simple glaze

SIMPLE ORANGE GLAZE (This is MY favorite but we did not do this one in class)

Add 1 tsp. Grated orange peel and 3 TBS. Orange juice to 2 cups sifted confectioners sugar (icing sugar)

SIMPLE VANILLA GLAZE

Add 1 tsp. Vanilla and 3 TBS. Milk to 2 cups of sifted confectioners (icing) sugar.

YOU CAN THEN ADD SPRINKLES OVER THE GLAZE! YUM!