Doughnuts are usually fried, right? That’s a problem, because not only do I not own a fryer, I’m also trying to watch my girlish figure so that I can properly wreck it over Thanksgiving. So, what to do, what to do. Pass on the doughnuts and serve a fruit salad instead? Nahhhh. Enter Google search for “baked doughnut recipes.”Surprisingly, there were tons of recipes online for baked doughnuts. Most of them were just made of flour, sugar, baking powder and butter — presumably, they produced cake-y doughnuts. That’s not what I was looking for. I wanted to make Krispy Kreme-esque doughnuts: light and pillowy, more sweet bread than cake, and 101 Cookbooks had a recipe that seemed to fit the bill.
I didn’t have doughnut pans or cookie cutters, but it turns out that cups and shot-glasses are perfect for cutting out perfectly round doughnuts and adorable little doughnut holes. Take that, Williams-Sonoma, with your ridiculously enticing product emails…
These doughnuts turned out to be a huge pain in the ass (recipes that involve yeast always are), but were totally worth it. Super light and chewy, and oh-so-delicious dusted with cinnamon sugar. Perfect served with a dollop or two of fresh whipped cream.
Recipe for these baked doughnuts can be found here, with one slight modification: I wanted a slight apple flavor, so I substituted a 1/2 cup of the milk for about 1 cup of apple sauce. Unfortunately, the doughnuts turned out to be less apple-y than I would have liked. Next time I’m going to try using more apple sauce, or substituting apple butter or some other form of cooked apple.
what a great blog! here is so many inspirations!
have a nice time,
Paula
FEED ME OMG THOSE LOOK SO GOOD
-g
These look great! I especially like how you also improvised with your cutters!
Hello. Just browsing your site here, and liking what I’m finding. Thanks!
I know this was posted quite a long while ago on your baked apple cinnamon donut experiment. I wonder if you ever tried them again and changed your applesauce substitution idea? If you haven’t already found an alternative by now, maybe you don’t care anymore, but I suggest using pure Apple Cider (not juice) in place of the milk in the recipe. If you have found out something that worked well for you, I’d be interested to know.
FYI, since you mention in a few places you don’t like working with yeast much… Applesauce is one of those things that works well in bread or dinner rolls or pizza dough to make it a little healthier. You can cut the sugar by about 1/2 and replace the butter/oil when using applesauce in a yeast recipe. I’m a big fan of butter, so I don’t typically cut it out entirely. You really can’t tell there’s applesauce in the finished product, especially when it’s not served alone, but for maybe a slight textural change. Minus the butter, it will come out a bit drier and chewier.
Hi Joslin! Thanks for your comment