On Donuts

Baked! Pumpkin! Donuts!

Happy Friday! This is the weekly recipe post for paid subscribers—another fall baking adventure filled with photography from deep, deep in the archives! On Tuesday, all readers will receive an interview with Giulietta Pinna of Limonata Creative, who is a brilliant and creative gem of a human. There is a hard stop ahead, which sucks, but hey: I’ve got to bring home the donuts somehow.

As established in last week’s recipe, I am not a pumpkin pie lover. In fact, hater might be a better word for how I feel about America’s favorite Thanksgiving treat. I’ve tried to explain this to people many times, and every time, I end up casting myself as the villain, so let’s leave it at that and talk about all of the other worthwhile things you can do with canned pumpkin.

After purchasing a donut pan a few years back, I went through a deep, intense donut phase. Everything was donut-ed; nothing was sacred. There were good donuts (chocolate with blood orange glaze) and great donuts (these!). There were not many bad donuts, at least once I had the donut pans. Before then, there were some unfortunate incidents.

That silly little donut pan, which I think cost me about $12 on Amazon or somewhere not very noble, is a great example of an unfortunate cooking philosophy that I maintain despite feeling bad about it. I really do feel (sorry) that you there are simply some things (ugh, I hate saying this) that you should just break down and buy (not to be bossy) because they just make life that much easier (really!). A donut pan is one of them.

The reason it makes me cringe so much to put my foot down to solidly is that I hate telling anyone that they can’t make something because they don’t have the right equipment. Cooking is an art in flexibility and substitution. Surely you can just pipe donut dough around an upside-down cupcake tin! Reader, I tried. You actually cannot. The unfortunate truth is that if you don’t have a donut pan and you cannot bring yourself to add another thing to your already over-populated kitchen shelves, don’t make donuts. Make cupcakes. Or a loaf bread. Or something in an 8x8” baking tin. Know that you have my full support. This is why I don’t have a microwave.

Anyway. Back to these donuts that have forced me to abandon my inherent beliefs about cooking. Pumpkin goes well with chocolate, so don’t skip the chocolate glaze. Or do, and make it a maple glaze! Or do something more creative and write to me and tell me what you did.

I do not say this lightly, but this recipe is easily made vegan with the substitution of two flaxseed eggs and non-dairy milk. I have not tested it with gluten-free flour, but I’d be curious to try. Something tells me it might work well.

Baked Pumpkin Donuts