Gluten-free, dairy-free double chocolate donuts

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Liam told me last week that he didn’t like Valentine’s Day. When I questioned him about it, he said it was because he thought the holiday was boring. “All you do is color things and hang them up on the wall.” Apparently that’s what they did at preschool, haha. He changed his tune yesterday when he brought home a stack of Valentine’s cards from his friends. Last year around this time, Liam and I had a baking day and made some Valentine’s Day-inspired donuts, so I thought he might enjoy baking some again. A little tradition of ours, perhaps.

The end result?

SO delicious!

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I decided that I wanted to make a chocolate donut this year. Something about a chocolate donut just feels incredibly indulgent. I found this recipe for baked double chocolate cake donuts from Adrianna from A Cozy Kitchen. Guys, this recipe is amazing. I made a few adjustments to the ingredient list because I had some gluten-free flour on hand and we try to keep Liam as dairy-free as possible.

This gluten-free baking mix is what I use most often. I find that it’s a pretty good trade off with regular flour and doesn’t change the texture too much. The bonus is that it’s a one-for-one substitution in any recipe. And since it’s a baking mix, you don’t have to add anything additional. Just measure and add. Easy-peasy.

It’s easy enough to substitute regular milk for your favorite non-dairy milk (we typically prefer almond). If you’re like me and don’t typically buy buttermilk, you can make it with non-dairy milk the same way you would make it with regular milk by adding some lemon juice. For the butter, this is our favorite to use for baking. And if you’re vegan, you could try substituting flax eggs in this recipe, but we didn’t try it.

What’s the best thing about chocolate donuts with chocolate glaze?

Sprinkles, of course!

These sprinkles totally make the donuts more fun. Especially if you’re four. But a warning to the mamas – it didn’t occur to me that this kind of sprinkles would bounce off the kitchen table. So even two weeks later, I’m still finding them on the floor. Worth it, but still a little messy. The glaze sets really well, but since four-year-olds are impatient, we couldn’t wait that long.

Liam has been on a snickerdoodle kick ever since our Christmas cookie baking day. So in addition to our chocolate donuts, we also make mini snickerdoodle donuts. You can find that recipe from Creations by Kara over here. I’m pretty sure the chocolate donuts were still our favorite, but you can’t go wrong with the cinnamon and sugar combo either.

Chefast sent us their non-stick donut pan combo kit to try out for our baking day. This is actually the first time I’ve ever used any kind of silicone baking pan. This set is awesome. It comes with two donut pans – one for large donuts and one for mini donuts. It also includes a spatula and five pastry bags. Pretty much everything you need to make your donuts, except the ingredients, of course! I tried baking with the pans both greased and ungreased. The donuts come out of the pan just fine either way, but greasing them first does make it a little easier.

The chocolate donut recipe we made was only for six regular-sized donuts. Other recipes I looked at made 12, so I would have had to do two batches with the large pan since it only hold nine. But honestly, we don’t need 12 donuts around here anyway. Or you could also split your recipe between the large and the mini donut pans and have a little of both. I like that this combo set comes with both sizes because it gives you options. And as a bonus, you can use these pans to make all sorts of things besides donuts. I was thinking about looking at frozen dessert recipes I could try with these pans, since they’re freezer safe. Might be kind of fun.

Let me know if you try these donuts. Hope you like them as much as we did!