Old-Fashioned (And Maple Bacon) Cake Doughnuts

A few months ago, we were given a free set of doughnut pans. Now we aren’t usually ones to give in to kitschy equipment like these, but we were feeling extra adventurous that day. So we went ahead and busted out the pans and set out to make the perfect doughnut recipe.

After many, many batches and a whole lot of trial & error, we think we’ve got one that's not only easy to make, but also delightfully crumbly and soft with an ideal balance of flavor.
We even made a maple bacon variant!

Old-Fashioned Cake Doughnuts 

(Approx. 25 minutes) 

(Makes 10 regular-sized, 20 mini Doughnuts)

1 cup (5oz) of flour
2 Tbsp white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp mace
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 Tbsp unsalted butter (melted)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Traditional White Frosting 

1 cup of powdered sugar
2 Tbsp of heavy cream

For Maple Frosting, add:
1/4 cup of maple syrup
1/2 tsp of maple extract

To start, preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Sift all the dry ingredients (including the sugar) into a mixing bowl and whisk together.

In a separate mixing bowl, combine all the wet ingredients and whisk together.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and use a spatula to mix thoroughly.

Use a piping bag to fill a lightly greased doughnut pan about 3/4 of the way full.

Bake for 5 minutes for regular sized, 4 minutes for mini doughnuts and then use a spatula to carefully flip and continue to bake for an additional 3-4 minutes. 

Of course, we had to make an icing for these; well two actually... whoops!

To make your icing, gradually whisk (or uhh fork?) your powdered sugar into the cream, adding it in a little bit at a time. The consistency should be much like yogurt.

Nothing left to do now, but to go for a dip!

We also made a maple bacon doughnut by adding maple syrup and maple extract to the icing and topped with some crumbled Ghost Pepper Maple Bacon.

These are just as good as what you can get from your local doughnut shop and far superior to the ones in that cellophane package. What's more is that each batch only cost us around $1.30!

We definitely recommend you try them for yourself!!