Easy recipe for baked pumpkin donuts with a quick bourbon glaze and crushed gingersnap biscuits. These are the perfect treat for a fall day! Filled with cozy spices and topped with a boozy bourbon frosting.
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Ingredients
To make these easy pumpkin donuts, you'll need:
- Butter - unsalted butter, softened at room temperature.
- Sugar - superfine granulated sugar or caster sugar.
- Eggs - best at room temperature, so leave out on the counter for a couple of hours.
- Flour - either all-purpose flour or plain flour will work in this recipe.
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Cinnamon
- Ginger
- Cloves
- Nutmeg
- Pumpkin purée - you will want pumpkin purée, not pumpkin pie filling. Pumpkin pie filling includes spices and additives that will impact the flavour and final bake of this recipe.
- Evaporated milk - this can be substituted for whole milk or heavy cream.
How to Make Baked Pumpkin Donuts
The process for making baked donuts with pumpkin and spices is super simple. This is essentially a one bowl pumpkin donut recipe and follows processes similar to a cake batter.
Prepping
Begin by preheating your oven and preparing your donut pans.
As you may already know from some of my other baked donut recipes, such as my Eggnog Donuts, I'm a fan of using silicone donut moulds. With silicone trays, you don't need to do any greasing, flouring or spraying - they don't need any prep. But, you can use whatever pan you have available or feel most comfortable with! If not using silicone, be sure to prep the pan as normal for baking.
Batter
In a large mixing bowl, beat together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy (about a minute with a hand held electric beater). Then add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.
Next, sift the dry ingredients into the bowl - the flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Beat on a low setting until just combined.
Finally, add the pumpkin purée and evaporated milk, beating to combine into a thick batter.
Quick Tips:
- When adding the dry ingredients and the pumpkin at the end, avoid overbeating by stopping before fully combined and using a spatula to mix the last bits.
- Give the mix a good stir at the end to be sure you've not missed any ingredients at the bottom.
- Adjust spices for your preferences - if you love ginger, but don't like clove, you can play around with the spices in this recipe. Think of a pumpkin pie here (or any other pumpkin-based recipe you may like).
Piping
Once you have your batter, it is time to fill the baking trays. It is best to pipe donut batter into donut pans. This is because pouring or spooning the batter around the mould will be tricky and messy.
Transfer your batter to a piping bag (or a sealable plastic bag with corners). Cut the tip (or corner) off leaving about a half inch opening to pipe the batter around the moulds. I usually pipe around each donut shape twice, filling the cavity about three-quarters.
Baking and Cooling
Bake the donuts in a pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes, checking for them to be risen, lightly golden and a toothpick to come out clean when inserted into the thickest part of a central donut.
Once removed from the oven, allow to cool in the pan for about 5-10 minutes, until able to handle. Then carefully unmould each donut and place on a wire rack to finish cooling.
Glazing Pumpkin Donuts
While these pumpkin baked donuts are perfectly edible just as they are, there's nothing better than a glazed donut!
For the glaze here, I've opted for a bit of a booze with a bourbon frosting. You absolutely can make this without bourbon - use a teaspoon of vanilla and then add about 2 tablespoons of milk, plus a little extra until you reach your desired consistency.
Simply stir the ingredients together, until you have a loose glaze that you are able to dip the donuts into one at a time. See the images below for a quick 'how-to' of this process.
Follow the glazing with a sprinkle of crushed gingersnap cookie crumbs for a touch of textured crunch and spice.
FAQs
These baked pumpkin donuts are best the day they're made, but they do last for about 2 days at room temperature if stored in an airtight container.
Yes! These donuts freeze easily. If freezing, I would recommend doing do so before glazing/decorating as the process of defrosting can make glazes become a bit runny.
When freezing, allow the donuts to cool completely before storing in a freezer safe container. These can be frozen for up to three months.
Defrost before decorating and serving.
I would recommend only using pumpkin purée for this recipe. When a recipe calls for pumpkin purée it is normally important to follow this and not substitute with pumpkin pie filling. This is because pumpkin pie filling contains other additives and spices that will impact the flavour and baking result.
Looking for more pumpkin based recipes? Check out:
- Pumpkin Pecan Bread
- Pumpkin Pound Cake
- Mini Pumpkin Bundt Cakes
- Pumpkin Cheesecake
- Banana Pumpkin Bread
- Pumpkin Scones
Baked Pumpkin Donuts
Equipment
- Donut baking tray
- piping bag or sealable plastic bag with sharp corners
Ingredients
- 10 tablespoon unsalted butter softened at room temperature
- ¾ cup superfine granulated sugar or caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1¾ cup all-purpose flour or plain flour
- 1¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 3 oz pumpkin purée
- 3 tablespoon evaporated milk
Ingredients for Bourbon Glaze and Topping (optional)
- 1 cup powdered sugar or icing sugar
- 3 tablespoon bourbon can be substituted for milk and a teaspoon of vanilla
- ½ cup crushed gingersnap cookie crumbs
Instructions
- Begin by preheating your oven to 350°F (175C/155C Fan) and preparing your baking pans (see note).
- In a large mixing bowl, beat together the softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about a minute). Then add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
- Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, ground cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg into the sugar mixture. Beat until just combined.
- Finally, add the pumpkin purée and evaporated milk and beat to incorporate into a smooth batter.
- Transfer the batter to a piping bag to pipe round the donut moulds.
- Bake in the centre of preheated oven for about 20 minutes, checking to ensure a toothpick inserted into the thickest part of the donut comes out clean.
- Once baked, remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 15 minutes (until able to handle) before carefully unmoulding from the trays to cool on a wire rack.
Instructions for Glazing
- If choosing to glaze, whisk together the powdered sugar and bourbon in a small bowl, until smooth.
- Carefully dip each donut in the glaze, coating the top (see images in the above blog post).
- Next sprinkle the donuts with crushed gingersnap cookies or dip to add extra crumbs.
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