Baked mini donuts

Stephanie is having a pajama day at school, and I volunteered to supply doughnuts for snack time.  I'm sure the teachers intended for me to buy them, because only crazy people make their own donuts, right? I just so happen to be that flavour of crazy.  I am a proud owner of one (sadly under-used) mini donut pan.  Unless I am handed a piping hot, fresh Krispy Kreme donut, I will choose cake donuts over fried every time.



If you look up mini donut recipes online, you'll find countless recipes, but most of them are essentially the same.  The one I use is this:

Baked mini donuts

1 cup flour
5 - 6 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 - 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 - 1/2 tsp salt*

1/2 - 1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 Tbsp melted butter
6 Tbsp buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350F and grease donut pan (I use cooking spray).
Whisk dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, whisk together wet ingredients.
Add wet to dry and mix thoroughly.
You can spoon the batter into each space (about 2 Tbsp) or you can put all the batter in a piping bag and squeeze it into the pan.
Bake for 10 - 12 minutes.
Cool in pan for 5 minutes and then cool completely on rack.

*use less salt if you don't plan on glazing or sugaring these; otherwise, they might taste too salty.



To make cinnamon sugar donuts, toss cooled donut in melted butter and then toss it in cinnamon-sugar.
For a basic glaze, mix one cup of confectioners sugar and a bit of liquid (water, milk, buttermilk).
For a nice chocolate coating, you can melt milk chocolate in a double boiler and dip the donuts into the melted chocolate.  It will harden as it cools.  Or you could just add cocoa powder to the confectioners sugar glaze.  That works too.

I also baked chocolate donuts with white glaze for variety.  That recipe was found here.