Vegan Baked Apple Cider Donuts
This Vegan Baked Apple Cider Donut recipe yields the tastiest donuts with lots of apple flavor and the perfect blend of spices. They'll definitely satisfy your biggest cider donut cravings!Vegan
Servings 12 donuts
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups apple cider
- 2 cups (209g) unbleached all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons aluminum free baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce
- 1/4 cup avocado oil
- 1/2 cup (100g) organic cane sugar or granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup unsweetened plain almond milk or other plant based milk
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Topping
- 1/2 cup (50g) organic cane sugar or granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- pinch ground cardamom
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease your donut pan.
- In a small saucepan, over high heat, add the 1 1/2 cups of apple cider. Bring the cider to a rolling boil, then reduce the heat to medium low. Continue simmering, stirring occasionally, until reduced down to 1/4 cup. (Keep a heat safe measuring cup close to the stove top. Once the cider looks like it has reduced quite a bit, start pouring it out into the measuring cup to see how much farther you need to go, then pour it back into the saucepan) For me, it took about 30 minutes to reduce down to a 1/4 cup. Once reduced, remove from the heat and set aside to cool down a bit.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. Set aside.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the 1/4 cup of boiled cider with the applesauce, avocado oil, sugar, almond milk and vanilla extract.
- Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients. Using a rubber spatula, fold the mixture together until combined, but do not overmix.
- Either spoon the batter into the donut pan, or fill a zipper bag with the batter and cut a hole in one corner to pipe the batter into the pan. I find that piping is much easier.
- Bake the donuts for 10 to 11 minutes (start checking them around 8 or 9 minutes if using a smaller pan) or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean.
- Allow the donuts to rest in the pan on a cooling rack for at least 2 minutes. (See Notes for tips.) Dump the donuts out onto the cooling rack and cool completely. Grease the pan again to bake the remaining batter.
- Combine the topping ingredients and dip each donut into the topping. (See Notes for tips.)
Notes
There are two options when it comes to getting the sugar topping to stick to the donuts. I've used both options and honestly, they both work really well.
- Vegan Butter Method: Allow the donuts to sit in the baking pan on a cooling rack for two minutes. Removed from the pan and continue cooling on the cooling rack. Brush each donut with a bit of melted vegan butter (or you could brush with avocado oil) before dipping into the sugar topping.
- No Additional Oil Method: Allow the donuts to sit in the baking pan on a cooling rack for a minimum of five minutes. This allows for some condensation that will help everything stick. Immediately after removing the donut from the pan, dip each donut into the sugar topping. The moisture works well to keep the sugar on the donut.