New Year's Ollie Bollen

I know I featured these last year as well, but the occasion for Ollie Bollen only comes around once a year, so I figured I would share them again! Besides, this is only our third year making them, and every year we are improving more and more and discovering different techniques that work better. Just as a brief recap, Ollie Bollen are deep fried Dutch fritters, literally translated as "oil balls", but commonly referred to as Dutch doughnuts. They are traditionally made and enjoyed once a year on New Year's Eve, and any leftovers (which doesn't always happen) are enjoyed for breakfast the next morning with a steaming cup of coffee. Ollie Bollen are best eaten fresh of course, but they do reheat fairly well the next day in the toaster oven. And of course, you cannot have Ollie Bollen that have not been sprinkled (or more commonly, drowned) in a layer of icing sugar.
My father is always the master of the Ollie Bollen dough and deep fryer at our house. This is likely because he grew up in the Dutch household and was already familiar with the process. I believe he uses a recipe that is a combination of a modern recipe we found in one of our breads cookbooks, and his mother's old recipe. Ollie Bollen are okay plain, but they taste better with some chopped apples or raisins and the best with both. We also tried chopped, mixed glazed fruit (leftover from Christmas), which was good but a tad sticky and messy in the deep-fryer. We have even tried adding miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips, but be advised that this turns the oil a little messy, so if you really want chocolate Ollie Bollen, wait until the end of the batch. They are quite tasty though!