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Our Gluten-Free Donut Journey
We love donuts. Who doesn’t, really? However, making gluten-free donuts has been a bit of a struggle for us.
A little over a year ago, we got a silicone donut pan for Christmas. We were really excited to make gluten-free donuts from scratch. By that point, we’d come up with a gluten-free flour blend that we loved, and our other baked goods were getting to be really good. From cookies to cakes to pizza crusts, we felt like we could make a lot of gluten-free goods that tasted like their gluten counterparts.
However, gluten-free donuts took a lot more trial and error than we’d anticipated. It’s not that they tasted bad, but that they usually stuck to the pans, fell apart, or the glaze sunk right in.
That was up until a few weeks ago. We went through another donut kick recently and after one batch that just wasn’t quite right, we decided to experiment with our flour blend. We also went back to a glaze recipe we’d come up with a few years ago that we usually used on pound cakes.
Put all of that together, and we finally had it right. Now we have the perfect gluten-free donuts, and it was surprisingly easy to do. We made carob donuts (a common chocolate substitute for those allergic), and they taste good to both chocolate and carob loves alike. Carob is also a “superfood” (see this link), although our gluten-free donut recipe does contain a good amount of sugar.
Tips & Tricks for Gluten-Free Donut Flour
The biggest thing we learned while making gluten-free donuts is that we needed to modify our flour recipe. While our flour is usually soft and produces fluffy, light cakes, we needed something sturdier for donuts so that we could get them out of the pans in one piece.
So, we thought back to our sister-in-law’s Vietnamese honeycomb cakes that are made from tapioca flour. They have a sturdier texture than our gluten-free baked goods and hold well in a mold.
For our gluten-free donuts, we decided to split the difference: roughly half of our mixture was tapioca flour/starch (also known as cassava), and the rest was our normal gluten-free flour blend. Depending on the ingredients in the flour you use, you might need to add more or less tapioca flour.
The donut batter will be a little harder to put into the donut pans just because the tapioca flour makes it thick and sticky, but they bake well and are far easier to remove.
Baked or Fried?
We find baked donuts to be the easiest, mainly because we don’t have an industrial kitchen or the tools to make perfectly round fried donuts. This means that our gluten-free donuts are more like cake donuts, but they are definitely not cake.
Silicone or Metal Pans?
Our recipe calls for silicone donut pans, rather than metal. When we were looking into what kinds of donut pans we wanted, we kept finding that silicone were easier to use when it came to actually removing the donuts. On top of that, they are easier to grease – or at least need less of it. We cannot use any spray cooking oils because they contain soy, so we wanted to avoid anything that needed it.
At the same time, if the donuts are too soft, then it’s really difficult to de-pan them. In addition to the alterations we made to our flour recipe, we also realized that we need to flip the pans upside down when they are cool enough to handle, and then press evenly on the back of each donut to release it.
The Glaze
Most donut glazes we have tried soak right into the donuts. While this is always going to happen a little, especially once they’re in an airtight container, there are some ways to prevent this.
First, you need to cool the donuts completely before storing them. Gluten-free donuts soak up a lot of liquid, so you’ll want to leave them out for quite a while.
Second, we found that we needed to include a bit of coconut oil to help the glaze to set. We do this with cookies and pound cakes that have more of an icing on top, but most donut glaze recipes we’d found were quite a bit thinner and essentially disappeared into the donuts.
"Chocolate" Gluten-Free Donuts (Made With Carob)
Equipment
- 2 silicone mini donut pans Silicone pans need to be placed on metal baking sheets.
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup tapioca flour/starch (cassava)
- 1/2 cup carob powder
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 cup non-dairy milk
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 2 tbsp vegan butter (softened)
- 2 tbsp canola oil
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups powdered sugar We use corn-free powdered sugar made with tapioca starch.
- 2 tbsp coconut oil (melted)
Instructions
- Grease the donut pans with the oil, butter, or spray of your choosing.
- In a large bowl, mix together the non-dairy milk, eggs, vegan butter, canola oil, and vanilla.
- In a separate bowl, combine the gluten-free flour, tapioca flour, baking soda, sugar, carob powder, and salt.
- Slowly add the dry mixture (i.e. the second bowl) to the first mixture. Stop to stir the mixture along the way.
- Once all the batter is mixed, transfer it to your donut pans. We typically spoon it, using another spoon to scrape off the excess. You want these to be at least 3/4 of the way full.
- Bake the donuts for 15 minutes. Check them with a toothpick before you remove them.
- While the donuts are baking, make the glaze. You will need to sift the powdered sugar into another bowl. Add the melted coconut oil and stir. You may need an additional 2 tbsp of your non-dairy milk and 2-3 tbsp of water. Add these very slowly, as the icing can become watery fast.
- Once the donuts are cool enough to remove from the pans, but still warm, coat them with the glaze. We found ourselves transferring the donuts between two sheets, pouring the glaze over, moving the donuts, and repeating with the runoff glaze. We did four rounds.
- Once the glaze has set, the donuts are ready to enjoy.
Conclusions About Gluten-Free Donuts
We could not be happier to finally perfect our gluten-free donut recipe. These are easy to make and very, very addictive. They don’t even taste gluten-free or chocolate-free, which is definitely a win.
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