A Good Recipe For Every Event

No matter the occasion—a birth in the family, an illness or death, disaster, graduation, birthday, special event, bake sale or fund raiser—my mother-in-law would bake up a batch of her famous spudnuts and deliver them to those concerned.
    For years, she was famous for the potato donuts with the special glaze. If the church sponsored a bake sale, she had to do a double batch – a couple dozen for the workers and the rest to sell for the fundraiser.
    As generous as she was with the spudnuts, she wouldn’t give out her recipe. However, just before her death she penned the recipe and gave it to her daughter with permission to pass it along.
    Although my wife makes the spudnuts occasionally, they just don’t seem to taste as good as when my mother-in-law baked them.
    Here’s Celia Bomar’s recipe for spudnuts and glaze:
SPUDNUTS
Makes 7 dozen spudnuts
1 qt. milk
1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup mashed potatoes
2 pkgs. or cakes of yeast dissolved in 1 cup lukewarm potato water
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla
 4 beaten eggs
1 tablespoon salt (approx.)
12 cups flour (approx.)
    Boil and cool milk, shortening and sugar. Mix mashed potatoes, yeast, soda, baking powder and vanilla with liquid and let rise until foamy (approximately 30 minutes).
    Add eggs, salt and flour, and let it rise until it doubles in bulk. Roll, cut and let it rise again.
    Fry, as with other doughnuts.
GLAZE
1 pound powdered sugar
1/2 cup boiling water
2 tablespoons butter or oleo
2 tablespoons vanilla
    As you take the spudnuts from the hot oil, drain a few minutes, then dunk in the glaze as hot as you can handle them.