Sweet Brownie Queen: Doughnuts! Chocolate, Pumpkin Spice, and French Breakfast

My latest obsession has to do with something I almost never touch..........Doughnuts!

I believe it started with the baked pumpkin doughnuts I saw on Pinterest. They intrigued me, so I saved the recipe. This lead to me discovering King Arthur Flour's website and purchasing doughnut pans. I was at a craft store one day, looking at what I thought was the clearance shelf, and came across a mini doughnut pan. It didn't have a price, so I found a sales clerk and asked. She informed me that no, that wasn't the clearance shelf, that is where the items with no home go. However, I had my 40% off coupon so it might as well be a clearance item. At that point I was picturing cute little doughnuts to amaze and delight Little C with, so I had to buy it! (This sounds a lot like the mini muffin pan from last year; will I ever learn!?!?)

I decided to start with the recipe on the back of the mini doughnut pan. Let me just say that mini doughnut pan is a pain! Such tiny wells and the batter is thick, so it's not like it runs in to place. However, I was determined. They were ok; Little C and Mr. SBQ liked them - I think they were just being nice. The recipe made something like 48 mini doughnuts and this pan holds 12! I made 2 or 3 pans and threw out the rest of the batter. There was nothing special about the flavor. The first batch was dry because I baked them 6 minutes; the 2 was better baked for 4 minutes. I tossed them in cinnamon and sugar while they were still warm - this way the sugar sticks. The first pan was cool when I tried to coat them with the sugar mixture and it didn't really stick. Warning about the mini pan - it is deceiving how many doughnuts you eat. I am not putting in a link to this recipe because I didn't like it - it's on the Wilton pan.

Trial number 2. I figured I would try the pumpkin doughnuts, and if I liked them, I would buy the regular doughnut pans. I made 1 pan of mini doughnuts and the rest I made as muffins. Oh wow! Totally different experience with this recipe! Flavor and texture are awesome! The mini pan is still tedious, but I was learning how to deal with it. I used 2 teaspoons to spoon a very small amount of batter on each side and then smooth them together. The muffins are great if you don't want to mess with a doughnut pan. These freeze well too! I tossed these in a cinnamon and sugar mixture also. I just put a cup of sugar and some cinnamon in a plastic food storage bag and toss a doughnut or two at a time to coat. One note on these; the amount of canned pumpkin is almost a full can.

Now I HAD to have the doughnut pan! And, why get one, when most recipes make 12 doughnuts? I ordered mine from King Arthur Flour (they have coupons); they are Norpro and are about the same price on Amazon.

The pans arrived (very nicely packaged) and I was super excited to try them. My sister-in-law and her kids were here, so I decided I would surprise them with doughnuts for breakfast. I wanted to try a chocolate doughnut recipe, but somehow had run out of brown sugar and that is the only sugar the recipe called for. So, I decided to make my French Breakfast Puff recipe as doughnuts instead of muffins. Since this was an experiment, I made 6 doughnuts and the rest as muffins. They turned out great. These are the ones that are dipped in melted butter and then tossed in cinnamon and sugar - even better as doughnuts! There were 5 kiddos at breakfast that day, so there were not any leftovers!

The obsession continues.........I replenished the brown sugar and had the chocolate doughnuts on the brain. So, this morning at 5:30 I was whipping up my 4th batch of doughnuts in about as many weeks.

These should be called dessert doughnuts and I am slightly ashamed that I fed one to my child for breakfast even though it was balanced out with milk, Greek yogurt and a banana. They are incredible! Cocoa powder, espresso powder, chocolate chips...........see why I couldn't stop thinking about them!?! I didn't even make the frosting that it calls for - I just coated them in granulated sugar. I was able to get 12 standard and 12 mini doughnuts out of one batch. I used my small cookie scoop - 4 scoops for each regular doughnut, and 1 for each mini doughnut. The regular size doughnut pan is a lot easier to get the batter in to. A frosting bag or a plastic bag with a corner cut off can also be used to get the batter in to the pans.

As always, for oil I used Extra Light Olive Oil. And a little secret, these are all dairy free......for the recipes that called for milk, I substituted rice milk and you can't even tell. I am on a dairy free adventure, so I am excited that I can bake using rice milk. The real test will be cake and I will try that very soon. I don't think I changed much else for each of the recipes. If you are new here, links to the recipes/sites are in the highlighted/underlined items. Enjoy!