Sunday Morning Biscnuts

What the hell?  Let me inform you again that my ancestors are German/Pennsylvania Dutch.  So I can eat me some noodles, pastries, strudel, etc.  Who would believe that my palate would not recognize my family’s   homemade donuts?  Some Sunday mornings my mom would rev up the electric skillet.  What?  Didn’t every home have an electric skillet?  How did you survive?  This electrical gadget was my mom’s microwave, which hadn’t been invented yet.  She would turn that baby on to the magic number, 350°, scoop out some Crisco shortening and place into the electric cook all.  Once the shortening had melted and was brought to temperature, the fun was just about to commence.  This procedure was a family affair.  Yes I said family affair, 3 young children, scalding hot fat and a pair of tongs that didn’t close squarely, a used brown paper grocery bag and two other lunch size paper bags with sugar and powdered sugar respectively.  Let the child abuse begin.  The dough; are you prepared for this, one cylindrical tube of…biscuits!  Yes I mean the Pillsbury prepared dough miniature hockey pucks.  I remind you this was the 70’s there were no jumbo, buttermilk, only the standard small size.  I remember there being about 10 discs of dough in each package.  So this means someone in the family was getting shorted.  I was the youngest at the time so guess who?  Now the preparation:  my mother would have us take an empty, sanitarily rinsed with hot tap water, pop bottle, remember those.  My sisters and I would take turns pushing this pop bottle through the center of each disc of dough, thus creating the donut.  The best part was the treasure inside the bottle, the donut hole!  Once this production was completed each dough puck went into the hot fat, flipping half way through the cooking.  The fully golden brown donuts would then be placed on the folded, brown paper grocery bag to drain.  We would then place 2-3 hot donuts into the lunch bag of sugar, shake and eat.  The donut holes cooked very quickly and were bite size nuggets of goodness.  This was my revenge for being youngest.  I would always be the one to shake the sugar on the donut holes.  Thus being the one to dig them out of the sugar.  I would eat as many donut holes I could get away with leaving my sisters to enjoy nothing but the donuts.  I’m guessing we weren’t the only family eating these.  This suggestion of making donuts out of biscuit dough probably dates back to ancient times.  Now we cut the prep time in half by using prepared dough and the electric cook all.  I remember these Sunday mornings as being good times.  I haven’t tried to replicate this memory because of Top Pot, Krispy Crème and the likes.  They do a much better job with the donut than any biscuit dough you can find.  But feel free to treat your family to these Crisco laden, sugar covered biscnuts.