If you click on Nostalgia, you can see that I often wax poetic about the past. My recent post on zinnias and sunflowers made me think about the other side of the family and I wanted to add another great heirloom recipe (and photo).
I love the old recipes that I find in the family cookbook. (If you recall, my aunt put this cookbook together with all the clippings, loose recipe cards, etc. that we found in my grandmother’s kitchen after she passed.) Most of them, I imagine, were copied on scraps of paper in my grandmother’s flowing hand. (She had the most beautiful penmanship.) I am so glad that my sister and I were brought up to know our way around a kitchen and a recipe or we would be lost trying to follow some of these cooking instructions.
My goal is to ultimately make them all and convert them into modern, readable, successful recipes.
These doughnuts seemed to be a lot of work, but usually Grandmother would make them when the grandkids visited.
This particular recipe was passed down from my great-grandmother (Grammy) to my Grandmother to my mom and aunts and finally to all the cousins. I never knew Grammy, but my mother tells me stories that I will probably pass along here eventually.
Grammy’s Snowball Doughnuts
Cream 1 c. sugar with 3 or 4 tablespoons melted oleo. Add 2 well beaten eggs, 1 cup sweet milk, 1 t. vanilla, salt, 2 t. nutmeg, 2 rounded t. baking powder and enough flour to make a stiff dough. Roll to 1 inch and use a doughnut cutter. Fry.
Yep, that is all there is. And, I copied it straight from the cookbook where it was typed just like this.
Usually, these hot doughnuts were placed in a small brown paper sack with cinnamon and sugar and lightly shaken.
I definitely remember grandmother making these when my cousin came home from college. (I think he was her favorite!)
Here are some other recipes from my grandmother’s kitchen:
Potato Salad and You
(And more about these doughnuts and her favorite grandson!)
I love this photo of my grandmother and her sister. We are guessing that is is from the 1930s. I don’t know who is giving whom “what for”!