Name: Red Velvet Baked Donuts
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 8 min
Total time: 28 min
Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour; 1 cup granulated sugar; 1 tsp baking soda; 2 tbsp unsweetened natural cocoa powder; 1/2 tsp kosher salt; 2 eggs; 1 egg yolk; 1/2 cup oil; 2 tbsp unsalted butter (melted); 1 cup buttermilk; 1 tsp white vinegar; 2 tsp vanilla extract; 1 tbsp red food coloring; 3 oz cream cheese (softened); 3 oz unsalted butter (softened); 2 cups powdered sugar; 4-6 tbsp milk; 1 tsp vanilla extract

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With Valentine's Day upon us, these festive and easy red velvet baked donuts will make any valentine swoon with love for you. These donuts are easy enough to pull off on a workday/school day morning but look fancy enough to fool everyone into thinking you picked them up at the donut shop.

Baked donuts allow you to enjoy that donut shop donut experience but with a little less guilt as it is not fried. These red velvet donuts are a mix between a cake-like texture and a muffin. In testing these beauties, I ended up adding another egg yolk and a little more oil than I started with to make them a bit denser. They have that classic red velvet flavor with a hint of chocolate a bit of tang and are finished with a delicious cream cheese glaze.

As Valentine's Day approaches, I decided these would be the perfect vessel for some cute heart-shaped sprinkles I had found. I also split the glaze into two bowls, leaving one white and dying the other a deep pink with a few drops of red food coloring. Feel free to leave it all white or get creative with your sprinkles and colors.

red and white donuts with sprinkles on a counter

How to make Red Velvet Baked Donuts

These donuts come together surprisingly quick! To get that classic donut look, you'll want to invest in a donut pan. I use this one from Amazon. After greasing your donut pan with a nonstick spray, you'll whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt together in a medium bowl. Next you will combine you wet ingredients together, whisking the eggs and extra yolk, buttermilk, vinegar, melted butter, oil, vanilla and red food coloring. You will then stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just mixed.

How to get batter into a piping bag cleanly.

To make less of a mess when filling your donut pans, I like to place the batter into a piping bag with a pastry tip or a ziptop bag with the corner snipped off and pipe the batter into the donut molds. I find the easiest way to do this is the place the piping bag or zip top bag into a tall glass, folding the excess bag over the side of the glass and then filling the bag with the batter. If using a zip top bag you will wait to snip off a corner of the bag until you have filled it. Make sure you don't fill it to the top and squeeze the air out up to the batter.

zip top bag in glass with red velvet cake batter in it

Fill the donut cavity only about ½ full to make sure it doesn't overflow or lose the signature hole in the middle. These bake at 350 degrees for only 8 minutes. You'll cool them in the pan for a few minutes and then place them onto a wire rack to cool completely. For the glaze, you'll combine softened cream cheese and butter with powdered sugar, vanilla extract and milk until you reach your desired glazing consistency. Once the donuts are completely cooled dip the top side into the glaze about halfway up the donut until the top is fully coated. If you want a thicker coating, dip it twice, letting the excess fall off in between. Decorate with sprinkles of your choosing!

How to store baked donuts

These baked donuts will last in an airtight container on the counter for 2 to 3 days. If you would like them to last longer, simply refrigerate them in an airtight container instead and they should last around a week. I found that they will last either way being fully glazed and they didn't start to dry out in these time frames.