Fall is my favorite time of year. Living in the Midwest, you get to experience the best of it. The leaves change color, and it's finally getting cooler. It's this time of year that you start to see all the pumpkin recipes showing up on the blogs and in the cooking magazines. I love pumpkin desserts, and after I got this pan on sale the other day, I knew I wanted to make pumpkin donuts. I had some honeycrisp apples (another wonderful fall occurence) on hand, so when I found this recipe from Cherry Tea Cakes for Pumpkin Apple donuts, I knew I had to try them out.
These donuts are really delicious, they are cake-like considering they are baked and not fried, and the apple cider glaze add a spicy sweet topping to the apple filled donuts. I altered the original recipe a bit by decreasing the amount of sugar and increasing the spices in the batter. I also swapped out some of the white sugar for brown sugar to incorporate a deeper more molasses-like flavor to the donuts. I think the changes turned out well. You will have some extra glaze left over after you dip the donuts, but I just spooned some over the donuts once the first glaze had dried to add an extra sweet layer. I will definitely be making these again.
If you didn't have a donut pan, you could always bake these in muffin tins, but you would have to increase the baking time a bit.
Pumpkin Apple Donuts with Apple Cider Glaze
makes 10-12 donuts
For the donuts:
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ cup white sugar
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- ½ cup canned pumpkin puree
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup peeled, cored and chopped apple
For the glaze:
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- ¼ cup, or less of spiced apple cider or milk if you don't have cider
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease donut or muffins pans.
In a large bowl sift together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt.
In a separate bowl, mix together egg, white and brown sugar, pumpkin and oil. Add pumpkin mixture to flour mixture; stirring just to moisten. Fold in apples. Spoon batter into doughnut molds filling roughly half full to three quarters full.
Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let sit in the pan for a few minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Allow to fully cool before dipping in the glaze.
To make the apple cinnamon glaze, mix powdered sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl. Add cider or milk until you reach the desired consistency. Dip each doughnut in and allow glaze to set. If you have any extra glaze you can always spoon it over the donuts once the first layer of glaze has fully set.
