Sour Milk Doughnuts

Old-fashioned cake doughnuts made the way your grandmother made them: with sour milk or buttermilk in the batter and lard in the fryer. The acid in the sour milk reacts with baking soda to give these doughnuts their characteristic tender, fine crumb that you simply can’t replicate with sweet milk and baking powder alone.

Nutmeg is the classic cake doughnut spice, and freshly grated does noticeably more work than the pre-ground stuff. The hint of ginger underneath isn’t traditional in every recipe but turns up in vintage New England versions, and it gives the doughnuts a faint warming bite that pairs beautifully with morning coffee.

Lard fries cleaner and crispier than vegetable oil. The smoke point is right where you need it for cake doughnuts, and the rendered pork fat adds a faint savory background note that pure vegetable oil lacks. The recipe even tells you to strain and reuse it.

Pro Tips

• Chill the dough the full hour. Cold dough rolls and cuts cleanly. Warm dough sticks and tears
• Roll out to a true ½ inch. Thinner doughnuts cook through too fast and miss the cake-doughnut texture
• Maintain frying temperature at 375°F (190°C). Cooler oil makes greasy doughnuts. Hotter scorches the outside before the inside cooks
• Roll the doughnuts in granulated sugar while still hot. Sugar sticks to warm grease and falls off cool ones

Variations

• Roll the warm doughnuts in cinnamon sugar instead of plain for old-fashioned spice doughnuts
• Dip the cooled doughnuts in a maple glaze made of maple syrup and powdered sugar
• Substitute vegetable shortening for the lard if you don’t keep lard around