Spurgos (Lithuanian Doughnut Holes) A Fat Tuesday Treat

Spurgos! This is actually my second time making these (Sarah dusts the powdered sugar dust off her shoulder like a pro).  The first time, they were wibbly shaped because I had a recipe of words which did not include the part about shaping them.  I made one 'oops' in making these, but it was partly influenced by the start of Italian Month... so We'll blame the Tirimisu for it.

Ingredients
2 lb flour
3 oz Yeast (it's a lot of yeast- some people make the dough the night before for this reason)
2 Cups Milk
8 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 tsp vanilla
Powdered Sugar
Oil for Frying

Directions
1. Use 1/3 of the flour (about 10 oz), the milk, sugar, and yeast.  Blend well & let it rise for 30 minutes (it will double).
2/ Beat yolks and salt, add it to the dough.  Add non-scaldingly hot butter, vanilla, & remaining flour (Here, I added rum flavoring because I so liked it in the Tirimisu that I thought- hey, let me not measure here and just throw some in because the original recipe for this called for rum. This addition did not make the doughnuts yummy- it made them a little odd tasting so don't do that thing I did).  Mix well & cover to rise for about an hour.
3. Take rounded Tablespoons of dough in your floured hands and roll them into balls.  Let them rise while you heat the oil.  The crazy people that wrote the original recipe tried frying these for 8 minutes at 375- well, they were crazy, that's either too high or too long.  at 375, the outside turns black while the inside is doughy.  so take it down to the 350 range and watch your first few doughnuts, once they are golden, take them out of the pan and pull them apart to see how long it takes them to cook at that temperature.  you should get somewhere under 2 minutes per side.
4. 2 options of coatings: Cinnamon sugar & powdered sugar.  To coat- roll the spurgos in cinnamon sugar or dust them with powdered sugar (I used a wire mesh strainer to do this).

~Enjoy!~