For The Love of Doughnuts...

Baked Doughnuts with Old Fashion Glaze

Okay, so doughnut pans are the coolest thing ever guys! Seriously! You know, I never really gave all that much thought to doughnuts before, I mean, sure I liked them well enough, and I ate them. - If you grew up in Canada within a stone’s throw of a Tim Hortons, then doughnuts were definitely a part of your cultural experience. - but I was never Homer Simpson crazy for them. They were never my sweet treat of choice.

When I went vegan I stopped eating doughnuts - obviously, since they aren’t vegan, and vegan doughnuts are somewhat hard to come by at least in the Midwest. Although I hear through the vegan grapevine that the West Coast has a couple of awesome vegan doughnut shops. Lucky! Anyway, I gave up these little treats and really never felt all that bad about it. I wouldn’t say I ever missed them. However over the past year the vegan blogging world has been posting more and more of these amazing vegan doughnuts, some store-bought and some home-made, and more and more vegan cook books are coming equipped with a doughnut recipe or two in the dessert chapter.

Every time I would see one of these pictures or recipes I’d feel a fleeting sense of nostalgia, and then a sudden desire to make some doughnuts. For quite some time now I’ve been wanting to get my hands on a couple of doughnut pans, but it wasn’t until last weekend that my wonderful, thoughtful husband brought home three doughnut pans for me. I’d been talking about doughnuts endlessly for a week, and since there are no vegan doughnuts for sale around here, he did the next best thing and bought me the pans to make my own.

I started with a batch of Baked Chocolate Doughnuts with Chocolate glaze from Chloe Coscarelli’s book “Chloe’s Vegan Desserts” - Although I neglected to take a picture of the finished product, sorry. - and my world was changed forever! Baked vegan doughnuts! What a novelty, and so delicious! The recipe made about 18, and even though I gave 8 away, the rest didn’t last long. They were just too good to be true.

Baked Maple Sriracha Doughnuts 

So now I’m in something of a doughnut baking frenzy, it's so much easier then I initially thought it would be and now I wish I hadn't waited so long to get some doughnut pans! I seriously want to make every doughnut recipe I can get my hands on now, and so today I decided to try another batch of doughnuts from Chloe, these ones were the Baked Doughnuts from “Chloe’s Kitchen” and are topped with Old Fashioned Glaze. Personally I thought there was a little too much nutmeg in the doughnut itself, and I thought the glaze tasted too much like powdered sugar, but my husband liked them, and that’s all that really matters.

Then I decided to do something crazy. I decided to bake a batch of maple Sriracha doughnuts. I know exactly what you’re thinking, you’re thinking ew! But I’m telling you, as skeptical as I was at the start I am a total convert to using Sriracha in sweet confections. These were probably some of the best doughnuts I’ve ever had. The balance between spicy and sweet was perfect. The doughnut batter itself is rather plane, all the goodness comes in the glaze. Powdered sugar, maple syrup, almond milk, and Sriracha - doughnut heaven! This recipe comes from a little book called “The Veggie Lover’s Sriracha Cookbook” by Randy Clemens, a totally cute book that I can’t wait to get more use out of.

So the moral of the story is, get your hands on some doughnut pans, because they’re loads of fun, and you're gonna love it!