Doughnuts - Mrs Beeton style

So there I was flicking through Mrs B looking for basic biscuit recipes to make the small ones something for a picnic tea and I come across the batter section. Having been playing with various batter recipes recently I thought I'd have a look and got to her Indian Fritter recipes, which are basically jam filled doughnuts and sounded pretty simple! So I'm sure you know where this is headed..

Doughnuts or Indian Fritters based on a Mrs Beeton recipe.

3oz basic gluten free flour mix, I used Dove Farm.
pinch of salt
boiling water
3 eggs (she used 2 eggs and 2 yolks)
jam or jelly
deep fat fried oil (and pan)

Sieve the flour into a bowl and add the salt. Then stir in enough boiling water to make a stiff paste, she says a good 1/2 gill, I just added it till it was stiff but reasonably lump free. Leave to cool for a short while.

Beat the eggs in a bit at a time until smooth.

Make sure the fat is up to heat, I ended up having it quite high as it seemed to need it, she says when it is just beginning to haze as she didn't have temperature based deep fat friers!

Now comes the difficult bit she says take a half filled tablespoon, add a tsp of jam in the middle then cover with more mix to fill the spoon and then drop into the fat. I found it pretty impossible to stop the jam leaking out and deepfried burnt jam is very unpleasant! So after a couple of goes I made unfilled ones and they were great. The two below are the jam filled ones.

Cook till golden brown then drain well and roll in sugar.

They are really nice and did taste just like doughnuts, the batter itself has no sugar so you can easily decide how much you want when you cover them.

Don't do much more than a tablespoon at a time as they puff up a fair bit and I found any bigger ones were slightly under cooked in the middle.