Red Velvet Donuts {Guest Post}

I am very happy to introduce my first guest post! Mallory is my coworker’s daughter and she is away at school in Chicago. (Which is too bad because we are like baking soulmates!) Mallory agreed to do a little guest post for me, and what a perfect time because my hubby and I are on vacation!! Thanks again chica!

My name is Mallory and I am a college student with a very large sweet tooth. I’ve always loved baking and filling people’s bellies with delicious treats. Very recently have I started venturing outside of boxed cake and brownie mixes (though they are delicious). Now that I am out of the dorms and in an apartment, I am eager to use my kitchen as much as I can. I’ve actually had to cut back on the baking so I didn’t overload my roommates and myself too much, not that they ever complained! Anyway, a lot of what I bake comes from Pinterest and from this blog.

A few months ago, I had my very first red velvet cupcake at a wonderful place called Flacos Tacos. I recently found out that these are actually made by Au Bon Pain and distributed, but I still like to pretend that they are from Flacos because it gives me an excuse to go back weekly. 🙂 The cupcake was absolutely magical, and I have yet to find anything like it. Essentially, I’ve been obsessed with red velvet ever since and have been eager to find a recipe. I’ve realized that I have never baked red velvet anything. While searching for the perfect, but somewhat simple recipe to try, I came across a website called velveteenbaker.com through Pinterest. Since I hadn’t yet used this Babycakes Donut Maker my grandma bought me for Christmas, these cute little red velvet donuts definitely caught my eye.

Because I have absolutely no experience baking red velvet or donuts, I figured I would follow this recipe exactly before trying to make it my own.

Ingredients for Donut batter:

2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cups buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp red food coloring

1 tbsp natural cocoa powder, not dutch-processed

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 tbsp butter, melted

Preheat oven to 425°F. Spray donut pan with nonstick cooking spray. In large mixing bowl, sift together all purpose flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

Make a paste with the cocoa and red food coloring. This part worried me. Mine was powdery rather than pasty and red, but don’t worry because when you add it with the rest of the mixture it will turn out the way it should. Here’s what my “paste” looked like:

Next, add buttermilk, eggs, vanilla extract, butter and red paste mixture and beat until just combined. The batter should be thicker than normal cake batter. This picture doesn’t help much considering that it’s red on red.

Fill each donut cup approximately 3/4 of the way full. Bake 5-8 minutes or until the top of the donuts spring back when touched. Mine baked in about 3-4 minutes, but if you’re baking in donut pans in the actual oven 5-8 will be necessary. This was actually the trickiest part and I made an absolute MESS. As you can see below, the holes in the donut maker are tiny, but I wanted to be precise as possible so that they turned out round and fluffy.

I thought that using a piping bag would do the trick, but the mixture was way too thick for it. I ended up with red batter all over my cabinets and my arms somehow. I don’t even know how that happened. But I also don’t have much experience with piping bags, so if you have the skill and are feeling gutsy go for it. 🙂 Anyway, I ended up just using a good old-fashioned silverware spoon and hoped for the best. The spoon worked better for me. In the picture below, the piping bag ones are on the left and the better-looking spoon ones are on the right.

Also, I baked the donuts before I even made the vanilla glaze. That way, I could glaze them all at once and didn’t have to worry about the mixture hardening and becoming chunky.

Ingredients for Vanilla glaze:

2 tbsp hot water

2 cups confectioner’ s sugar

1 tbsp milk (I substituted buttermilk since it was all I had)

½ tsp vanilla extract

In small bowl, stir together all ingredients until sugar is completely dissolved. Use immediately to glaze donuts. You can either toss them in or dip just the tops. If the glaze starts to harden you can add more hot water, though I didn’t need to.

I basically took the donuts by hand (some cooled, some not) and dipped them in the glaze. I let them dry for a minute or so and dipped them again to make the coating a little bit thicker. Here’s the final product. They were yummy and a lot better when fresh. Though I think that next time a cream cheese glaze would be amazing!