I’m excited to be posting my first post of 2016! Am really looking forward to what the year will hold and all the fun recipes I want to try and will share with all of you here. I mentioned in an earlier post that I recently bought an iCake multi-cake maker (I think the American equivalent is the Babycakes Multi-Treat Baker), which I used to make waffled potato latkes (if you want to wow your friends, waffling whatever you planned to make is a great way to transform a dish!). I’ve been looking for more reasons to use my cake maker, so was excited to hear from my son’s preschool that he has almost finished his supply of birthday cake because it gave me a great opportunity to play around – this time I decided to try making mini glazed chocolate donuts (vegan donuts, of course!).
I decided to see how my chocolate beet cake recipe would hold up for these mini donuts. Nut, egg, dairy, and soy (depending on your choice of milk)-free, this flexible recipe can be made gluten-free by substituting in your favourite gluten-free flour blend. Where I live, donuts are not that common, and the ones you do find are nothing like the wonderful melt in your mouth creations you can find at Tim Horton’s or Krispy Kreme, so this was a worthwhile experiment for me and a total novelty for my son since none of the options here are dairy- and egg-free, so he had never had a donut before.
After prepping two loaf pans for the oven to restock our cake supply at the preschool, I took the last third of the batter to experiment with. I used a pastry brush to lightly brush the donut pan with oil (I used grapeseed oil because it has such a gentle flavour), to make sure the donuts would be easy to remove from the pan. To keep things tidy, I filled an icing bag with the remaining batter and used it to fill the donut pan (a very recommended technique).
With the iCake, figuring out the bake time was sort of an experiment, waiting to see how long it took for the donuts to finish each time since the second time around I think the heat was a bit higher. I more or less waited until they passed the toothpick test and had started to pull away from the sides of the mould.
While letting the donuts cool on a rack, I prepared a simple vegan icing sugar glaze. To do so I added confectioner’s sugar, a few tablespoons of milk (I used soy milk), a spoon of coconut oil, and a splash of vanilla extract to a small pot and melted it over low-ish heat, stirring until I had a smooth mixture.
Once the donuts and the glaze had cooled, I then simply dunked the donuts into the glaze so they were nicely covered and placed them on a sheet of parchment paper to set.
That’s all there is to these glazed chocolate donuts!
Be sure to store these little vegan treats in the fridge (if you have any left) to keep the glaze from melting off and to keep the cake from going off (because of the fruit content).
Hope you enjoy this one as much as we did!
- 2 cups flour (I used whole wheat)
- ¾ cup cocoa powder
- 1½ cups sugar (I used cane sugar)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 tsp baking soda
- ½ cup oil (I used grapeseed oil)
- ½ cup unsweetened applesauce
- 2 cups milk (use the alt milk of your choice)
- ⅔ cup pureed roast beet (equivalent to 1 medium-large beet)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1¼ cups confectioner's sugar
- 3 tbsp milk (use the alt milk of your choice)
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- Preheat the oven to 180 C
- Roast a medium-large beet for 30-40 minutes (until tender).
- Let cool, remove the peel and then pulse in a food processor until you have a fine puree.
- Measure off ⅔ cup and freeze anything remaining.
- In a large bowl combine the oil, vanilla, sugar, applesauce, beet and milk.
- In a smaller bowl combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
- Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and then whisk until there are no clumps hiding. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl.
- Preheat your donut maker (or keep the oven on if you are using silicon moulds in the oven).
- Poor the batter into an icing bag and clip the open side closed.
- Cut an opening in the narrow end and cleanly squeeze the batter into the donut moulds. Close the mould/icake maker and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the donut comes out clean and they start to shrink away from the edge of the mould.
- Remove the donuts from the donut maker with a spatula and lay on a rack to cool (If oven-baking, remove the silicon moulds from the oven and let cool before removing the donuts).
- To prepare the icing glaze, add the confectioner's sugar, milk and coconut oil to a saucepan and stir continuously over low-medium heat on the stove until you have a smooth mixture.
- Remove from the burner and let cool before dipping your cooled donuts into the glaze.
- You can also ice the donuts with royal icing and add sprinkles.
Welcome!
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