Let’s be honest, it is highly doubtful that this exact recipe was made on the trail, despite being in the Oregon Trail cookbook. In all my research, I have yet to read that someone brought cream of tartar with them…but at the same time, the recipe is simple enough that I bet there were variations of it made before they started running short on ingredients! Oh, and don’t forget to check out the accompanying Instagram reel.
Circling-Up Doughnuts
The Oregon Trail Cookbook
Step One: The recipe starts by simply listing a bunch of ingredients – I assumed it meant for me to just add them all together so, I did: Cream of tartar rubbed into flour (I hope that just meant mixed in), soda dissolved in milk (I also hope that meant baking soda), butter the size of a small egg, eggs, sugar, milk, salt, and nutmeg. They gave measurements for everything, which was nice.
Step Two: Add “flour enough to roll out soft”. Turns out, that was a lot of flour. I was impressed at how well I did, though, adding just enough to make a soft dough while still being able to roll it out.
Step Three: Drop into boiling lard. The book also noted that a slice of potato will keep it from burning. I put in all the lard I had, and watched it for awhile as it started smoking more and more and finally decided that it wasn’t actually going to boil. It did – but only in response to the dough going in. And that slice of potato did nothing to keep that first batch from burning until the lard cooled a little. I will say nothing after that burned though.
Step Four: Okay, there was no step four. But I sprinkled powdered sugar on the doughnuts because I wanted to.
Verdict:
I kept snacking on them as I worked – including the dough – because it was good! Daniel loved them too, and I would totally make this again. I did end up adding some vegetable oil though, because I definitely needed more lard – the centers of those first ones didn’t get cooked all the way through because it wasn’t deep enough (but it was still good). And I was pleasantly surprised by how fluffy they were considering it used baking soda instead of yeast.
Have you made doughnuts with baking soda instead of yeast? Or used a potato slice to keep them from burning?
Forest Idylls 
I have indeed made donuts many times without yeast. We call them fry cakes and used to hand them out at Halloween to all the adults accompanying trick-or-treaters. They are best eaten the first day and SO yummy.
Oh, cool! And what a great idea to hand them out to the adults!!