The other day I was brainstorming what my next baking venture should be. As always, I hopped on Pinterest to explore my home page for unique or delicious looking recipes, but that day I couldn’t find anything that jumped out at me. Later that day however, my niece told me she was wanting to try her hand at baking donuts with me and my mom, and VOILA, my next recipe was afoot. To make things even better, I already happen to own a donut baking pan like the one pictured here:
Turns out as soon as we get prepped to bake the donuts that my niece requested, she decided she wasn’t interested any more and went in the other room to learn TikTok dances (she’s 13 years old and actually a really good dancer so to each their own). Regardless of whether she was still on the donut-baking-train or not, I was committed.
I had a few flavor combos in mind, but because I had 3 very, very sad looking brown bananas chilling in my pantry, I knew what I had to do. Any time I get ready to bake a new recipe I always jump to Google and search “Best ____ ____ recipe” and look for the recipe that has the highest and most reviews. Of course there are a few sites I use more frequently because their recipes have always turned out incredibly and the recipes are easy to follow, but the “Best” search has generally been the most successful way to do it for me. So with my brown, over ripe bananas on deck, I did what any person stuck in quarantine seems to do and typed in “Best Banana Bread Recipe.” My eye immediately shot to “cinnamon sugar banana bread muffins” by Together as a Family which had great ratings and got started!
I followed the banana bread recipe as is but instead of adding to a greased muffin pan I poured the bread into the donut pan! That simple! No rocket science baking here. The only real adjustment needed was to the baking time. Since the mold for the donuts is a bit more shallow than a muffin pan, you will only need to bake them for around 14 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick comes out with only a few moist crumbles (cringe, sorry). Once you remove your cooled donuts from the pan, flip them over! If you haven’t used a donut pan before you’ll notice that if you take the donuts out and do not flip them, the hole in the middle will look a bit small and sad. By flipping them over you’ll see that the hole is much more defined underneath!
Before your banana bread donuts cool all the way, dip just the top of the donut in a bowl of melted butter and then immediately into a separate bowl of cinnamon sugar! I suggest only dipping one side of the donut in the sugar since it does make for a very sweet donut.
Now that I have tried this delicious, easy donut recipe I am already thinking of what flavor combos I could bake next! What flavors would you like to see? Let us know in the comments on our blog or shoot us a message on our Insta!
To Bakeries and Beyond 