These baked Apple Cider Doughnuts are a great breakfast treat. They’re dunked in a light cream cheese cinnamon glaze.
When I was growing up, Sunday mornings were all about donuts. Sometimes they were about pancakes or French toast, but mostly they were about donuts!
I remember hopping in the car to accompany my Dad to Winchell’s, where we’d choose a variety of donuts to bring home to the family. Personally, I liked the maple bars, old-fashioned and anything with pink icing or sprinkles. As a girl who is more often than not watching her calories, I don’t visit too many donut shops these days. Instead I do things at home, like make these baked Apple Cider Doughnuts.
The pans are lined with nonstick spray and a sprinkle of sugar. I invested in some donut pans on Amazon, but something tells me they’d bake up just as well in a mini-muffin pan.
Be careful not to fill the batter to the tops of your donut pans or you’ll lose the hole-in-the-middle when they puff up while baking. Uh, yeah… that happened to some of mine.
They’re pretty good on their own without any adornments.
Apple Cider Doughnuts are even better dunked into glaze. This glaze is a simple mix of powdered sugar, light cream cheese, cinnamon and milk.
Place them on a rack to let the icing set.
They’re ready to eat when you are. The texture of these is a bit different than regular, full-fat, evil donuts. They kind of have an airy cake texture. I think they are best eaten the day they are made. My family would probably disagree and tell you that day-old leftovers are just as good, so enjoy!
Apple Cider Doughnuts
Ingredients
DOUGHNUTS:
- granulated white sugar, for preparing pans
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1½ teaspoons baking powder
- 1½ teaspoons baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 large egg, beaten
- ⅔ cup packed brown sugar
- ½ cup apple butter
- ⅓ cup pure maple syrup
- ⅓ cup apple cider
- ⅓ cup plain nonfat yogurt
- 3 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
ICING:
- 2 ounces light cream cheese
- 1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 dash cinnamon
- 2 to 3 tablespoons nonfat milk
Instructions
MAKE THE DOUGHNUTS:
- Preheat the oven to 400°F. Coat the doughnut pans (you'll need two 6-cavity pans) with nonstick spray or oil, and sprinkle with sugar, shaking out the excess.
- In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon; set aside.
- In another bowl, whisk together the egg, brown sugar, apple butter, maple syrup, cider, yogurt and oil. Add the dry ingredients and stir just until moistened.
- Divide half of the batter among the cavities in the prepared pans, spoon about 2 generous tablespoons of batter into each cavity. Don’t fill them to the top or your doughnuts will lose their holes when the batter puffs up while baking!
- Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until the tops spring back when touched lightly. Loosen the edges and turn the doughnuts out onto a rack to cool. If you only have one doughnut pan, you can clean the pan, re-coat it with oil and sugar, and repeat with the remaining batter.
ADD THE ICING:
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, cream cheese, and cinnamon, adding enough nonfat milk to create a spreading or dipping consistency. Dip the tops of the cooled doughnuts into the icing, then set right-side-up on a rack to let the icing set.
Notes
- You will need a couple 6-cavity doughnut baking pans for this recipe.
- You can also make these into 24 mini-sized doughnuts.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
What else could they be baked in if you don’t have a donut pan?
You could try them as donut muffins?
Please advise me – what is apple butter; peanut butter and almond butter I know, but have never met apple butter.
Also we don’t have non-alcoholic cider in UK, can I use apple juice?
Yes, you can use apple juice. In the USA, you can find apple butter, pumpkin butter– things like that with jellies and jams in the market.
Any substitution for the apple butter?
I don’t think so– that’s what makes these doughnuts have their apple flavor!
Wow best baked doughnuts. Ever I thought they would be to sweet but they were perfect thank. You
ohhh my. These are perfect for the season! Mmmmm! I love baked donuts 🙂
WHOA!! These babies need to be mine!
Yummm that looks so good 😛 thanks for sharing with us 🙂
Can you use whole wheat flour for this recipe?
I’d try it with half whole wheat. Generally replacing a recipe entirely with whole wheat doesn’t always work out so well.
No frying?? This is wonderful! I love making homemade doughnuts (apart from the mess and calories) I haven’t made them in years so this will be a very welcomed treat!
Thank you Lori for sharing this delicious donut recipe. We just made our first batch and started devouring them as they came out of the oven. I made these for my toddlers, so I substituted 2 C all-purpose for 1 C all-purpose and 1 C whole wheat pastry flour. They were so light and sweet, my husband didn’t even know that they had whole wheat flour in them! I also made 24 with the sugar coating and 18 without (your sugar coating is definitely more tasty). We didn’t add the icing, although it does sound delicious.