Baked Chocolate and Vanilla Bean Donuts

As I told you over the weekend, I got a lot of use out of my thrifted donut pans. The recipe that I have been using the most of one from Vegan Yum Yum. However, I add an extra teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and only add the tiniest shake of cinnamon to the batter. For a chocolate cake donut, I simply replaced ¼ cup of flour with cocoa powder. I made one batch of chocolate and two batches of vanilla bean. Each batch made about 10-12 donuts for me.


I played a lot with different toppings, to try and allow for a lot of various flavors. I made a simple glaze from powdered sugar and water to dip the chocolate donuts in. For the vanilla bean donuts, I dipped a few in a pink sugar glaze and threw on some sprinkles to create a ‘Homer Simpson’ donut. I also made a lemon glaze, and threw a handful of coconut on top of those. I made a chocolate glaze using Valhrona cocoa powder and almond milk (Valhrona cocoa powder is much richer than normal baking cocoa, and I highly recommend giving it a chance. It’s worth the price for the extra flavor). I threw sprinkles on part of the chocolate dipped donuts, and crushed Chick-O-Sticks on the remaining. The Chick-O-Stick flavor didn’t come through as much as I would have liked, so if I play around with them again in donuts, I might add a handful of ground candy to the batter.


I also learned an important lesson. If you are baking several dozen donuts the night before you serve them, you might not want to wrap them in an aluminum pan with plastic wrap. Mine got a little too wet, even though they had all fully cooled before I wrapped them. They were fine after a few hours of sitting unwrapped again, but I think it would have been better to just let them sit in an open container overnight.
I equally love cake and yeast donuts, but I need to attempt making yeast donuts again soon. I would also like to work on a blueberry and raspberry cake donut! Do you have any favorite donut recipes? My friend Jenna made a resolution to make a batch of donuts every other week this year. I am excited to see her progress and all the flavor combinations she comes up with!