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.
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.
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.
Red Velvet Baked Donuts
Ingredients
Red Velvet Donuts
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 tablespoon unsweetened natural cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 egg yolk
- ½ cup oil
- 2 tablespoon unsalted butter melted
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon white vinegar
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon red food coloring
Cream Cheese Glaze
- 3 oz cream cheese softened
- 3 oz unsalted butter softened
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 4-6 tablespoon milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
For the donuts
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease donut pan with nonstick spray.
- Stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa powder and kosher salt in a medium bowl.
- In a seperate bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk, oil, melted butter, buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and food coloring.
- Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined, being careful not to overmix.
- Spoon the batter into a pastry bag or zip-top bag with the corned cut off after filling and pipe the batter into the donut pan filling each cavity about ½ full.
- Bake for about 8 to 10 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then transfer the donuts to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Dip each donut top-down halfway into the cream cheese glaze letting any excess fall off and dipping a second time for a thicker coating. Decorate with sprinkles as desired!
For the glaze
- Beat the cream cheese and butter together in a bowl until creamy. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add the milk starting with about 4 tablespoon and mix until combined. Add more milk by the tablespoon until you achieve your desired consistency. I used 6 tbsp.
Shanda says
I made these today. They’re easy and perfect for Valentine’s Day. It did take mine longer to bake But I used a silicone pan so that may be the difference
Tara says
Thanks Shanda!
Thea says
I made these with gluten free cup for cup flour and they were perfect! They were so welled loved at my house I have made them twice. The second trial I added else milk to help my frosting stay thicker. Thanks for the recipe!!
Tara Kringlen says
Thanks Thea! So glad to hear that they worked with gluten-free flour!!