I was craving doughnuts the other day, so I decided to make a big batch of them for breakfast Friday morning.

I love doughnuts of all shapes and sizes: Baked, fried, glazed, frosted…As long as it’s sweet and fluffy with a hole in the middle, I’ll probably enjoy it. However, I’m inclined to prefer baked doughnuts when I make them at home.

Why? you may ask. It’s because frying doughnuts at home is a tricky business and it rarely results in the same texture and mouthfeel as doughnuts you buy at a bakery. Maybe there’s an expert fryer out there with all the right equipment, but when I try to make doughnuts in a vat of hot oil in my own kitchen, they always end up tasting weird. I really think it comes down to equipment and technique.

However, if you make baked doughnuts, you don’t have to worry about all that. You can mix up a batter similar to one you’d make for a cake, you fill in some doughnut molds, and then you bake the doughnuts for a bit in the oven until they’re fluffy and golden brown on the bottom.

The only tricky part about making baked doughnuts is filling in the molds. You can do this with a spoon, but it’s a little more time consuming and messy than if you use a pastry bag with a piping tip. I’d highly recommend the latter. You don’t even need a piping tip; you can grab a large plastic bag, put all your batter inside, and then cut a small triangle off a corner to pipe batter into the molds.

I melted some Askinosie chocolate for the top of each doughnut and put some rainbow sprinkles on top. One of my favorite parts about doughnuts is there’s usually a decent amount of surface area, so you can get creative with toppings. I might do some strawberry cardamom doughnuts this week. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this song.

Baked Doughnuts with Askinosie Chocolate

Ingredients

for doughnuts:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 cup (180 ml) unsweetened almond milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp unsweetened applesauce
5 Tbsp butter, melted

for chocolate topping:
1 cup (175g) chopped chocolate (I used Askinosie)
sprinkles

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Liberally spray two doughnut molds with cooking spray and set aside.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a big bowl. Whisk together the almond milk, vanilla extract, applesauce, and butter, and then mix it into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix until there’s no big clumps or lumps or traces of flour.

Pipe or spoon the batter into doughnut molds, filling 2/3 of the way to the top. Bake the doughnuts for 15 minutes until they’re light golden brown on top and spring back to the touch. Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool completely on a wire rack before topping with the chocolate.

To make the chocolate, bring a small pot of water to a simmer and set a heatproof bowl with the chopped chocolate on top. Stir the chocolate with a spatula until it is completely melted. Remove the bowl with the chocolate from heat.

Take a cooled doughnut and quickly invert it in the chocolate so the top is coated. Place it on a wire rack. Repeat the process for each doughnut, and then top all of them with sprinkles. Enjoy!

*You can put the doughnuts with chocolate and sprinkles in the fridge to let the chocolate harden up. Then, store the doughnuts in an airtight container for a couple days at room temperature or a week in the fridge. I put mine in the fridge and warm them up for 20 seconds in the microwave.