Donut Recipes - The Bake School

Baked sour cream donuts

Janice Lawandi — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:36:27 +0000

These baked sour cream donuts are like old fashioned donuts that are baked, not fried, and then coated in granulated sugar. Just as satisfying as the real thing, but easier to make!

The idea of baked doughnuts is intriguing. We all love any form of deep-fried dough, really. So, how could a baked doughnut come even close to satisfying the craving for a sweet, deep-fried treat?

The recipe for baked sour cream donuts is super easy to throw together. No mixer is required. It yields six baked doughnuts, which is the perfect number of doughnuts to make considering that they are best served the day they are made. I baked them in vintage donut pans (though they might be pans for savarin cakes actually...) but feel free to use a Nordic Ware donut pan.

The donuts are cake-like, soft but slightly dense on the inside, and lightly crispy on the outside. Coating them with granulated sugar enhances their crispy texture. I definitely wouldn't use powdered sugar on these. I love the rougher texture the granulated sugar brings.

These sour cream donuts are kept simple, flavour-wise, with just a splash of vanilla and a hint of nutmeg. I opted to use vanilla extract instead of a vanilla bean to ensure the vanilla flavour came through. The flavours are perfect as is, but I can't wait to play some more with the recipe and try different spices or even some lemon zest.

I love this recipe so much that I transformed it into baked chocolate sour cream donuts, baked pumpkin donuts, and even chocolate-glazed baked donuts.

📖 Recipe

Baked Sour Cream Donuts

These sour cream donuts are baked, not fried, yielding a cake donut with a crisp exterior, just like the real thing!

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 12

Total Time 27

Servings

Calories 300kcal

Author Janice Lawandi

Equipment

Ingredients

125 grams bleached all-purpose flour
2.5 mL baking soda
1.25 mL Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt
1 pinch ground nutmeg
125 mL sour cream (14% fat)
100 grams granulated sugar plus more for coating the doughnuts
60 mL canola oil
2.5 mL pure vanilla extract
1 large egg(s)

Metric - US

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175 °C). Prepare a six-donut pan by greasing it with Pam or some vegetable oil. Place on a rimmed baking sheet and set aside for later.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and pinch of nutmeg. Set the dry ingredients aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the sour cream, granulated sugar, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, and the egg. Switch to a spatula and stir in the dry ingredients.
Fill a pastry bag (without a tip) with the batter and pipe it evenly among the prepared doughnut pans. The batter should reach about half way up the inside of each doughnut pan.
Bake the doughnuts for 12–16 minutes until the top edges begin to turn golden brown.
Remove the rimmed baking sheet from the oven and let the doughnuts cool for about 5 minutes before tossing them in the extra granulated sugar.

Nutrition

The post Baked sour cream donuts appeared first on The Bake School.

Baked amaretto doughnuts

Janice Lawandi — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:00:04 +0000

To go straight to the recipe for these doughnuts? click here for the baked amaretto doughnuts recipe.

In the spirit of taking on new challenges, I decided to show that you can easily replace the milk in your baking recipes with Almond Breeze. It's as easy as swapping out one for the other.

These donuts are cakey and flavoured with amaretto, definitely a fun treat. If you'd prefer a plain baked doughnut recipe, try these baked sour cream baked donuts or baked pumpkin donuts tossed in cinnamon sugar.

📖 Recipe

Baked Amaretto Donuts

Chocolate-glazed baked amaretto donuts made with Almond Breeze. These donuts are baked, not fried.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 12

Total Time 32

Servings doughnuts

Calories 216kcal

Author Janice Lawandi

Ingredients

For the doughnuts

83 mL Almond Breeze unsweetened almond milk
28 grams unsalted butter
67 grams granulated sugar
15 mL amaretto liqueur
1.25 mL pure vanilla extract
5 mL vinegar
1 large egg(s)
125 grams bleached all-purpose flour
5 mL baking powder
1.25 mL Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt

For the glaze

100 grams icing sugar
10 grams Cacao Barry extra brute cocoa powder
2.5 mL light corn syrup
1.25 mL pure vanilla extract
15 mL amaretto liqueur
15 mL Almond Breeze unsweetened almond milk
1 handful sliced almonds toasted, to garnish

Metric - US

Instructions

First prepare the doughnuts

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Prepare your doughnut pans by greasing them and then placing them on a baking sheet.
Melt the butter with with almond milk over medium–high heat in a small saucepan.
Pour this mixture over the granulated sugar in a medium bowl. Let cool until the mixture is just warm/almost room temperature, stirring every so often to help dissolve the sugar.
Add the amaretto, vanilla, vinegar, and egg and mix well to combine.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and whisk to combine.
Transfer the doughnut batter to a piping bag and pipe into the prepared pans.
Baked the doughnuts for about 10 to 12 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Prepare the glaze

In a small bowl whisk together all the ingredients to form a thick, not too drippy glaze. Smooth it on the tops of the doughnuts with an offset spatula or twist/dip the tops of each in the glaze, finishing with a sprinkling of toasted almond.
Best eaten the day they are made.

Notes

This recipe calls for Diamond Crystal fine Kosher salt. If using regular table salt, add half the amount or the recipe may be too salty!
For this recipe, I used Almond Breeze unsweetened almond milk

Nutrition

Calories: 216kcal

Almond Breeze sent me samples of their almond milk and financial compensation to develop recipes with their products this month. Thanks for supporting the sponsors that allow me to create new recipes for Kitchen Heals Soul. As always, please know that I wouldn’t mention the product if it wasn’t worth it. And I really have been using Almond Breeze since 2009.

The post Baked amaretto doughnuts appeared first on The Bake School.

Baked chocolate donuts

Janice Lawandi — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 06:07:06 +0000

This is what you should make when you are craving a glazed chocolate cake donut, made with sour cream to achieve that perfect cake donut texture and topped with dark chocolate ganache and chocolate sprinkles.

This baked chocolate cake donut recipe was sponsored by Cacao Barry.

The quest for baked chocolate cake donuts isn't so straightforward. It took multiple batches to get their texture of them just right. I did a lot of reading of other baked chocolate donut recipes, and most of them had A LOT of chemical leavener in them (baking powder and baking soda), so much so, that when I baked my first batch of donuts, they were so light and fluffy, I could barely get them out of the pan without breaking them. I guess the first versions of my recipe would have made a great chocolate layer cake or chocolate cupcakes, but terrible donuts.

Jump to:

Baked pumpkin donuts

Janice Lawandi — Sun, 17 Oct 2021 22:14:33 +0000

Learn how to make baked pumpkin donuts with this easy recipe. They are a fun fall treat that makes a great breakfast or snack! You will need a donut pan to make these pumpkin donuts since they are baked, not fried. You can coat them in cinnamon sugar or glaze them if you prefer.

The beauty of baked pumpkin donuts is that you don't have to deep fry them, which can be a messy, though rewarding, endeavour. These easy donuts are made from a simple pumpkin cake batter, lightly spiced, then baked in donut pans.

If you love to bake with pumpkin, order your copy of the e-book All About Pumpkin so you can showcase this star ingredient!

What you will need to make these

These pumpkin donuts are cake donuts, so they are made from a batter, similar to pumpkin cakes or pumpkin muffins. Here's what you will need to make them:

all-purpose flour is needed to give structure to the batter so that the donuts bake nice and light
baking powder, not baking soda is used here because the batter is made with milk and doesn't have the acidity that baking soda may need to help the donuts rise up. Remember baking powder is a complete chemical leavener.
salt, specifically Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt is a fine salt that isn't too salty. The salt is needed to balance out the sugar and bring out the flavours in these donuts. If using table salt, add half the amount
pumpkin spice mix or a mixture of spices, store bought spice mix or a homemade blend will work here
pumpkin purée, either canned or homemade
sugar, either granulated sugar or brown sugar works in this recipe, but I like to use both since brown sugar will add a little flavour. The sugar is very important to achieve the right texture so don't cut back on it
eggs help emulsify the ingredients together but also help the donuts bake lighter
neutral tasting oil, like canola oil is used to create tender donuts that aren't so dry tasting. You will need extra to brush the pans with
milk is needed to smooth out the batter. Too much milk makes these donuts too wet and heavy. The percentage of milk fat isn't so important here

Special equipment

To bake donuts, obviously you will need a donut pan (I have two Nordic Ware pans you can find on Amazon). If you don't have donut pans, don't worry: you could bake these in muffin pans to make pumpkin donut muffins!

Filling donut pans can be tricky. I like to transfer the batter to a large piping bag without a piping tip. Cut the tip of the bag to create a large opening (about 1 centimetre or ¼–½ inch). This will make it easier to cleanly fill the donut pan without spilling too much.

Coating baked donuts

To finish baked donuts, you have several options:

toss them in cinnamon sugar when they are still hot so that the sugar adheres to the donuts
brush them with melted butter when they've cooled off then toss in cinnamon sugar to coat
glaze them when they've cooled off with a simple powdered sugar and milk glaze.

Personally, I like to let them cool and brush them with melted butter before coating in sugar. I find the melted butter gives these extra flavour.

Storage

The trouble with baked donuts is that they are best eaten within a day or two, especially if you've coated them in sugar. The sugar is hygroscopic and will draw moisture, liquifying and creating a wet coating on the donuts that isn't very appealing.

If you are a big fan of baking with pumpkin, check out my new e-book All About Pumpkin full of tips and tricks for getting the most out of fall's most beloved ingredient!

For longer storage, I suggest only coating in sugar the donuts you plan to eat right away. Store the rest in an airtight container and coat them in sugar when you want to eat them.

Still, just like pumpkin muffins, these are best eaten within a few days.

Substitutions

If you don't want to use pumpkin purée, you can try mashed sweet potato instead (the same amount) to make sweet potato donuts!

Feel free to play around with the spices in the donuts. For example, cardamom works will in them!

📖 Recipe

Baked Pumpkin Donuts

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 12

Total Time 32

Servings donuts

Calories 230kcal

Author Janice Lawandi

Equipment

Ingredients

250 grams bleached all-purpose flour
5 mL baking powder
5 mL ground cinnamon
2.5 mL ground ginger
1.25 mL ground nutmeg
1.25 mL Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt
0.625 mL ground allspice
0.625 mL ground cloves
2 large egg(s)
240 grams pumpkin purée or strained homemade pumpkin purée
100 grams granulated sugar
100 grams light brown sugar
78 mL canola oil or any neutral-tasting oil
60 mL whole milk (3.25 % fat)
58 grams unsalted butter melted
100 grams cinnamon sugar

Metric - US

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175 °C). Brush the cavities of two donut pans with canola oil (I used this one from Amazon). Set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, salt, allspice, and cloves. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, pumpkin purée, granulated and brown sugar, oil, vanilla, and milk.
Pour the wet. ingredients over the dry ingredients and whisk or fold to combine. Don't over mix.
Fill a piping bag with the batter, and pipe it into each of the molds to fill it about half-way. to two-thirds full.
Bake the donuts until a cake tester inserted into one comes out clean (about 12–14 minutes).
Immediately invert them onto a cooling rack to cool completely. Otherwise they may stick a little.
When donuts are warm, toss in cinnamon sugar OR if they've cooled off, then brush outside of donuts with melted sugar and toss in cinnamon sugar.

Notes

This recipe calls for Diamond Crystal fine Kosher salt. If using regular table salt, add half the amount or the recipe may be too salty!

Nutrition

The post Baked pumpkin donuts appeared first on The Bake School.

Sugar donuts (no yeast)

Janice Lawandi — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:00:00 +0000

This easy sugar donut recipe comes from my grandmother and makes traditional baking powder donuts, so no yeast required to make these! You can coat these with cinnamon sugar to make sugar donuts, or a maple glaze to make maple glazed donuts. Up to you!

As you can tell from the photo, my grandmother wrote up this recipe years ago on a recipe card, like most of her other recipes. My mom estimates that the recipe is almost 100 years old.

My mom has never made these donuts, and sadly, my grandmother is not here to coach me through my attempts to make her donuts. Her recipe card only has ingredients and amounts; no instructions, no mention of mixing methods, or order of addition of the ingredients as you can see in the photo.

I use the order of ingredients as listed to know what order to combine the ingredients and what mixing method to use. Since most of the wet ingredients are listed first, then all the dry, we can assume this uses the two bowl mixing method, also known as the muffin mixing method.

These are baking powder donuts that call for a chemical leavener instead of yeast. Both yeast and baking powder are common leavening agents used in donut making. Baking powder doesn't give a flavour to these donuts, while yeasted donuts taste a little different.

When you first mix the dough, it may seem like it's too sticky to do anything with. But once you've chilled the dough for 1 hour, the dough rolls out nicely on a floured surface.

How to shape donuts

Bagels are shaped either from a long "snake" of dough that is pinched together from end-to-end to form a circle or from a round ball of dough where the centre is poked through to expand it into a bagel shape. On the other hand, you use a different technique to shape donuts, which are cut out. The dough is rolled out into a sheet and then cut out. To do so, you have two options:

use a donut cutter like this Ateco cutter—this is what I use, or a vintage version of it (I have both but the vintage one can be tricky to use because the donut can stick to the cutter and you only have a small hole to help you push it through)
use two round cookie cutters of different sizes. Most bakers have a set of round cookie cutters with many sizes that work fine for cutting out donuts to the size you want.

Both work, but it might be easier to get the donuts out with two round cookie cutters because the dough can stick with some of the old donut cutters with handles and then it's harder to extract after. If you don't have a round cookie butter, you can use a round glass to cut out the donuts.

Frying methods

To deep fry donuts, I have tested two options: a deep fryer and a fry pan heated on the stove to 350ºF. I have tested both. By the way, a great trick for flipping donuts easily: use chopsticks!

Why use a deep fryer

I have fried these donuts in the Le Creuset Deep Sauté pan and also in a Waring Pro deep fryer. I find with the deep fryer, you can set it and forget it, and once the fryer hits the correct temperature, it's quite stable and the machine does the work of figuring out how to maintain the oil temperature for you. Just make sure to watch the thermometer (or to use one if your deep fryer doesn't have one) so that you know not to add donuts until the oil is the right temperature.

Also remember not to fry too many donuts at once. The cold donuts will lower the temperature of the oil and adding too many will cause the temperature to drop significantly. The donuts may then absorb too much oil and end up heavy and greasy.

Though the Waring Pro deep fryer has a basket, I don't use the basket to fry donuts because it limits the space. I remove the basket from the machine and fry directly in the deep fryer. This works fine. And to flip the donuts and get them out of the hot oil, you can use chopsticks or a spider strainer (which is commonly used in Asian kitchens) is great for fishing the donuts out of the oil.

How to fry donuts without a deep fryer

If you will be deep frying on the stove, I highly recommend investing in a Le Creuset Deep Sauté pan, which is the only pan I use for stove-top frying these days. The enamel cast iron pan is heavy duty so that when it heats up, it is very good at maintaining the temperature of the oil, which means that when you add the raw donuts, the temperature of the oil will be more stable, which will lead to a better fry.

Maintaining the temperature of the oil can be difficult on a stovetop. That's for sure. To avoid that the oil get too hot, I slide the pan on and off the burner. I find this works better than lowering the stove setting, which I set to 4 (medium or medium–low even) once the oil was heated to the right temperature.

You have to be VERY careful when you deep fry on the stove. And if there's ever a fire, remember to smother it! Turn off the heat and put the lid on the pan or throw a sheet pan down over the pot to cover/smother the fire.

If deep-frying truly scares you, remember that you can make baked donuts, like these baked sour cream donuts or these baked chocolate donuts, but you'll need a donut pan to do so! All of these recipes, like this one, use baking powder, a chemical leavening agent, instead of yeast.

Here's a half-recipe for my grandmother's baking powder donuts. It makes about a dozen donuts. You can coat them in granulated sugar or cinnamon sugar to make sugar donuts. Or you can make a glaze like the optional maple glaze below. You can also try a dark chocolate ganache glaze, or this chocolate amaretto glaze.

I've updated the recipe to use butter instead of shortening. I don't usually have shortening in my pantry, but feel free to use whatever fat you prefer.

📖 Recipe

Sugar Donuts

These sugar donuts are made from an easy baking powder donuts recipe so you don't need any yeast to make these!

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 25

Cook Time 5

Chill time 1

Total Time 1 30

Servings donuts

Calories 125kcal

Author Janice Lawandi

Equipment

Ingredients

1 large egg(s)
100 grams granulated sugar
2.5 mL pure vanilla extract
22 grams unsalted butter melted and cooled
125 mL whole milk (3.25 % fat)
220 grams bleached all-purpose flour
2.5 mL Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt
0.625 mL ground cloves
10 mL baking powder
1 L canola oil for deep frying
200 grams cinnamon sugar

Maple glaze (optional)

125 grams icing sugar
60 mL maple syrup
whole milk (3.25 % fat) as much as needed for diluting the glaze

Metric - US

Instructions

Whisk together the egg, sugar, vanilla, butter, and milk in a bowl. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and ground cloves.
Combine the wet and the dry ingredients and stir to form a sticky dough.
Cover the bowl tightly and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
Roll out the dough to ½–¾ inches and cut out donuts with round cutters (use 1 big and 1 small cutter to make traditional ring donuts).
Heat a deep sauté pan (like this pan from Le Creuset) half-filled with oil to 350 ºF (175 °C). Prepare a sheet pan with a wire rack set over it. Line with a little paper towel.
Fry the donuts, 3 or 4 at a time until golden brown, then flip and continue frying until the colour is fairly even.
Transfer the fried donuts to the prepared rack and let them cool slightly before tossing in cinnamon sugar to coat. Note that if you want to glaze the donuts, you would skip the sugar coating.

Maple glaze (optional)

Whisk together the icing sugar, maple syrup, and a splash of milk to form a thick glaze.
Dip the donuts on one size and twist to coat the surface. Then flip over and place back on the wire rack so that the glaze sets. Repeat with the other donuts.

Notes

This recipe calls for Diamond Crystal fine Kosher salt. If using regular table salt, add half the amount or the recipe may be too salty!

Nutrition

The post Sugar donuts (no yeast) appeared first on The Bake School.